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Leonardo Ferreira
Postdoctoral Scholar at UCSF at UCSF
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Leonardo Ferreira
Postdoctoral Scholar at UCSF at UCSF
Joined 03/04/2018
Level: LEVEL 01 (12 mo pts: 0 pts)
Rating: 4.6786/5 stars (28 ratings)
Lifetime points: 477 pts
Cell-based gene therapies offer unprecedented promise for medicine. One day, it may be possible to cure degenerative diseases that consist of the loss of one or several specialized cell functions, as well as to decelerate the deterioration our bodies experience during aging. However, several hurdles must be surpassed in order to establish cell transplantation therapies, a major one being rejection by the recipient's immune system. This challenge is particularly prominent for autoimmune disorders, such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, where the immune system mediates the destruction of self-tissues. My Ph.D. thesis work, carried out in the laboratories of Jack Strominger and Chad Cowan (Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology) at Harvard University, focused on understanding immune tolerance using pregnancy as a model, as well as developing new tools to interrogate our immune system at the genetic level. Currently, I am a postdoctoral scholar in the laboratories of Jeff Bluestone (Diabetes Center) and Qizhi Tang (Department of Surgery) at the University of California San Francisco. I envision that we will be able to use our capacity to engineer the human genome with high precision and efficiency to manipulate our immune system, enabling us to treat several devastating illnesses now labeled as incurable. I am highly committed to make that vision become a reality.
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