Roberto Mallone (Cochin Institute) IBCS seminar - From benign islet autoimmunity to type 1 diabetes: lessons from the T-cell/beta-cell cross-talk

Bio
Professor Mallone received his MD PhD degree from the University of Turin, Italy. After a Postdoc with Jerry Nepom at the Benaroya Institute in Seattle, he moved to Paris where he is currently Professor of Immunology at Paris Descartes University, Diabetologist at the Cochin Hospital and leads a research team at the INSERM Cochin Institute. His research focuses on autoimmune T cells and the understanding of type 1 diabetes mechanisms in order to develop T-cell-based biomarkers and therapeutics. Major contributions to the field include the isolation of islet-reactive CD4+ T cells from the blood of T1D patients, the demonstration of the central role of CD8+ T cells in beta-cell autoimmunity, the development of T-cell monitoring tools to clarify therapeutic mechanisms in clinical trials, and the exploration of perinatal vaccination strategies to improve thymic immune tolerance mechanisms. More recently, he described a universal state of ‘benign’ islet autoimmunity imprinted in the thymus (Sci Immunol 2018) and the first immunopeptidome of human beta cells (Cell Metab 2018).