Qizhi Tang, PhD, is professor in immunology and director of the UCSF Transplantation Research Laboratory, where she leads basic and translational research in transplantation immunology. Research in the Tang Lab has two major focus areas:
1) Investigating regulatory T cell control of autoimmune diseases and transplant rejection and their therapeutic applications in these disease settings. The Tang lab has shown that infusion of regulatory T cells can reverse type 1 diabetes and prevent rejection of transplanted islets in animal models. Her group has developed processes to selectively expand human regulatory T cells that target transplant antigens and obtained FDA approval to evaluate safety and efficacy of these cells in organ transplant recipients. Since 2012, she has also been co-directing the regulatory T cell therapy program at UCSF, which is currently supporting 10 early phase clinical trials of Treg cell therapy in type 1 diabetes, pemphigus, islet transplantation, kidney transplantation and liver transplantation.
2) developing renewable immunosuppression-free beta cell replacement therapy for diabetes. In collaboration with stem cell biologists and bioengineers, the Tang lab is developing approaches to modulate immune responses to stem-cell-derived beta cells for immunosuppression-free beta cell replacement for patients with long-term type 1 diabetes.