Stanford University, United States
Katja G. Weinacht, MD, PhD
I am a pediatric hematopoietic stem cell transplanter and physician-scientist at Stanford School of Medicine/Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. My laboratory studies the signals that drive human thymic epithelial differentiation. Our goal is to regenerate thymic function for clinical applications. We have developed a platform for differentiating iPSCs into thymic epithelial cells (TECs). In a humanized athymic mouse model, iPSC-derived TECs (iTECs) spontaneously organize into thymic cortex and medulla and promote the development of a highly diverse, self-tolerant T cell receptor repertoire. Therefore, iTECs hold promise as a cell therapy for a broad range of applications, including improving T cell immune reconstitution after thymic injury and treating chronic graft-versus-host disease after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
IN VIVO AND IN VITRO ORGAN GENERATION
Thursday, June 12, 2025
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM HK Time
Thursday, June 12, 2025
2:25 PM – 2:35 PM HK Time