News

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), one of the world’s largest institutes dedicated to regenerative medicine, granted over $22.5 million to nine projects through the Quest Awards Program, which fosters the discovery of innovative stem cell-based and gene therapy technologies.

One of these projects was award to Qizhi Tang, PhD, for her project "Genome editing of human Tregs to enable combinational tolerogenic therapy with T cell targeted biologics for T1D."

Diabetes Center Director Mark Anderson MD PhD has been awarded the prestigious Coley Award from the Cancer Research Institute. The Coley Award honors groundbreaking contributions to cancer research, validating and highlighting the impact of innovative work, particularly in immunotherapy and recognizes Dr.

For more than half a century, the W.M. Keck Foundation has funded projects that are distinctive and novel in their approach, question the prevailing paradigm, and have the potential to break open new territory in their field by the finest researchers at the most innovative institutions in the United States, seeing real-world impact brilliant ideas come to fruition. 

Two members of Tang Lab, who are at the forefront of new approaches to islet transplantation, have received JDRF fellowships designed for various points in one's career. Peng Xiao PhD has received a JDRF Postdoctoral Fellowship, designed to attract qualified, promising scientists entering their professional career in the T1D research field.

Diabetes Center held their annual UCSF Obesity & Diabetes Research Scientific Retreat in March, bringing together UCSF, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and Buck Institute. The keynote speaker was Dale Abel MD PhD, William S. Adams Distinguished Professor and Chair at David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Diabetes Center is thrilled to announce the appointment of Zoe Quant MD, who shares this with the Department of Endocrinology, where she cares for patients who develop hormonal side effects from their cancer treatment, especially from immunotherapy, working with them to continue critical cancer treatments while optimizing their quality of life. She is the clinical lead for adults eligible for teplizumab, an immunotherapy approved to delay the onset of type 1 diabetes.

Diabetes Center proudly sponsored ImmunoExplore, an immersive 3-day free summer camp in which underrepresented minority (URM) Bay Area high-school students from under resourced communities learn about the field of immunology at UCSF Parnassus campus. Through interactive games, lectures, Q&A sessions, patient panels, and live anatomy dissections, UCSF students and faculty engage with high schoolers to expose them to exciting careers in science and medicine involving the immune system.

James Gardner MD PhD, a transplant surgeon and Assistant Professor in Surgery and Diabetes Center, is the first surgeon to be named a Pew Biomedical Scholar in the program’s nearly 40-year history for his work on how the body teaches itself to distinguish between its own tissues and foreign pathogens.

Audrey Parent, PhD has joined the core faculty of Diabetes Center as an Assistant Professor, as was announced by center director Mark Anderson today. "I am thrilled for Audrey’s new appointment in the Diabetes Center," Mark said, "Dr. Parent’s research program is right at the cutting edge between immunology and stem cell biology. This is a critical area where new approaches to overcome the problems in type 1 diabetes will be developed." 

Jeff Bluestone PhD, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), one of the highest honors bestowed on American scientists. "I am humbled by this honor," he said. "I have always believed that we are only as good as the people we train and collaborate with and I've had the privilege of partnering with so many great people."