They call teplizumab, approved in November by the Food and Drug Administration to delay the onset of stage 3 of type 1 diabetes, a new drug. Qizhi Tang knows otherwise.
Tang’s work included trying to grow immune protective cells — regulatory T cells called Tregs — that were notoriously difficult to isolate. Tang was able to grow those cells to great numbers and put them in a mouse model that indicated an effective cure of type 1 diabetes. Tang was named co-director of the JDRF Center of Excellence in Northern California, working with Stanford University’s Dr. Seung Kim.I didn’t know about diabetes, just as a disease burden. It is prevalent in China, but mostly there’s type 2 diabetes. I was studying the basic biology of and it turns out it can shut down the bad T cells that cause inflammation in pancreatic islets but also promoted protective cells, called Tregs. What really made a difference is the donors.
I consider is a playground. I have all of these playgrounds that allow me to connect with experts. Mark Anderson’s lab and office are next to mine; there is a lot of synergy to think of how to dissect the disease and then think of therapeutic development.