Ep. 138: “Reprogramming Autoimmunity” Featuring Dr. Pere Santamaria

Guest:

Dr. Pere Santamaria is a Professor at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary and Group Leader at the Barcelona Institute. He discusses how his lab studies the mechanisms underlying autoimmune diseases, with a focus on regulatory T cell biology and antigen-specific immune tolerance. He also explains how his team developed a nanomedicine platform that reprograms autoreactive T cells into regulatory cells, offering a targeted approach to treating autoimmune disorders without suppressing normal immune function, and shares the challenges of translating this technology from the lab to the clinic.

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Maternal Vaccine Against GBS – A Phase I/II trial shows that a maternal hexavalent Group B Streptococcus vaccine is safe and elicits robust antibody responses in both mothers and infants.

Decoding Treg Differentiation – TCR specificity and antigen presentation context determine regulatory T cell differentiation and phenotype, providing a framework for antigen-specific immune tolerance.

A Microbiota–Autoimmunity Axis – Disrupted dendritic cell development promotes gut dysbiosis that drives inflammatory dendritic cell expansion and systemic autoimmunity.

Programming Regulatory T Cells – TCR specificity and antigen presentation context determine regulatory T cell differentiation and phenotype, providing a framework for antigen-specific immune tolerance.

Image courtesy of Dr. Pere Santamaria.