Watch Webinar
Do you want to hear more from Dr. Lionakis? Watch his October 2024 presentation at a webinar organized by members of the European Reference Network on Rare Endocrine Conditions (EndoERN) of the Helsinki University Hospital. In this webinar, Dr. Lionakis presents findings from over a decade’s worth of research into APS Type 1/APECED. The science can be a little daunting at times, but hang in there. There is a Q&A at the end which helps explain the research presented and its implications for treatment.
Key Quote
“What I’ll try to do over the next forty minutes is share with you an eleven year journey that we had with patients with APECED, a disease I knew not much about before 2012 when I started my own lab. But, as I’ll show you, through a prospective evaluation of about 200 patients now and corroborating basic research, we’ve been able to learn a lot about fundamental immunology. But, at the same time, I’ve had the humbling experience to develop mechanized based treatments that, as you’ll see, have so far helped a growing number of patients […].”
Key Abbreviations and Terms:
- Aire+/+: Abbreviation for a “wild-type” mouse, a genetically unmodified mouse model
- Aire-/-: Abbreviation for an AIRE knock-out mouse (also AIRE-KO), a genetically modified mouse model lacking the autoimmune regulator (AIRE) gene
- Ifng-/-: Abbreviation for an interferon gamma knock-out mouse, a genetically modified mouse model in which the gene encoding interferon gamma has been deleted
- AIRE-/- Ifng-/-: Abbreviation for an AIRE/interferon gamma knock-out mouse, a genetically modified mouse in which both the AIRE gene and interferon gamma encoding gene have been deleted.
- IFN-gamma, IFNG, IFN-γ: Interferon gamma is a cytokine that regulates both the innate (immediate response) and adaptive (developed over time after exposure to pathogens) immune systems. (A cytokine is a substance secreted by certain cells of the immune system that have an effect on other cells.)