Gallego-Perez receives $736K award from the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases

Congratulations to Daniel Gallego-Perez, assistant professor, Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Surgery on recently receiving one year of pilot funding from the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIH/NIDDK). He was awarded $736k for his proposal submitted to the Catalyst-DEMD program entitled “Non-viral modulation of cutaneous tissue plasticity as a therapy for diabetes”.Gallego-Perez plans to use the funding to continue working with associate professor, Kristin Stanford (Physiology and Cell Biology, OSU) to reprogram skin tissue into brown adipose tissue for the treatment of obesity, as well as with Raghu Mirmira, Professor of Medicine in the Section of Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism, and Director of the newly established Translational Research Center (University of Chicago) to reprogram skin tissue into insulin-producing tissue for the treatment of diabetes. “The data we get from this will allow us to continue to grow our program, and to continue to go after large pots of research funding,” Gallego-Perez said. 

Summary: This application responds to the Catalyst-DEMD program, and focuses on the development of paradigm-shifting, Tissue Nano-Transfection (TNT)-driven therapies for diabetes via nuclear reprogramming. TNT uses silicon nanochannels and electric fields to rapidly (~100 milliseconds) deliver ample amounts of gene copies into tissues, to drive strong but transient (~7 days) non-viral expression in a highly localized and efficient manner. Previously we reported that TNT can be used to deliver reprogramming genes into mouse skin to induce vasculogenic and neurogenic reprogramming in vivo. Here we are proposing to leverage this novel nanotechnology for the development of next-generation therapies for diabetes. The proposed studies will be divided into two high-risk/high-reward focus areas, aimed at identifying pathway components for insulinogenic and adipogenic reprogramming of skin by TNT. Focus Area 1 will target b cell replenishing strategies for type 1 diabetes (T1D) by controllably converting portions of the skin into induced b cell-like tissue (ibT). Focus Area 2 will target adipogenic therapies for obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D) by converting skin into induced brown adipose tissue (iBAT). Cutaneous localization of cell therapeutics could enable minimally invasive monitoring and local topical treatment (e.g., trophic factors) to enhance survival/functionality. Such localization would also facilitate easy retrieval, if needed. Currently, there is no example of non-viral reprogramming of skin tissue into ibT/iBAT for the treatment of diabetes. Thus, the work proposed herein is fundamentally innovative and potentially transformative, fitting well within the scope of the Catalyst Award.