Nick Giannoukakis, Associate Professor
Ph.D., McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Email: ngiann1@pitt.edu
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Research Theme: Gene and cell therapy for autoimmunity
Dr. Giannoukakis' main research focus is to use genes and cells as drugs and medicines by which autoimmunity can be prevented or controlled. Broadly defined, autoimmunity refers to the phenomenon where a person's immune system begins to react against particular cells and tissues, leading to a disease state. One such example is type 1 diabetes mellitus where the body's immune cells seek out and eventually destroy the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas.
Dr. Giannoukakis leads a number of interdisciplinary projects harnessing the developmental potential of stem cells, viral and non-viral gene delivery vehicles, insulin-producing cell transplants and vaccine approaches to prevent type 1 diabetes and to restore insulin production. Additionally, his laboratory is engaged in genomic and proteomic discovery of immune cell molecules that can be manipulated to induce the regulation of the cells which promote inflammation in type 1 diabetes. Key to this is an understanding of the genetic and epigenetic regulation of such genes and the proteins that control their expression.
Among the specific ongoing projects, Dr. Giannoukakis is developing cell and particle vaccines to prevent type 1 diabetes; replication-defective viruses as vehicles with which insulin cell transplants can be engineered to resist immune rejection in diabetic recipients; proteomics discovery of dendritic cell and T-cell markers of regulatory immune cell subsets; discovery of type 1 diabetes susceptibility genes through systems biology approaches (proteomics and genomics); human embryonic stem cells as renewable sources of regulatory immune cells and insulin-producing cell surrogates; studies on epigenetic regulation of immunomodulatory secreted molecules.
Recent Publication
Immunoregulatory dendritic cells to prevent and reverse new-onset Type 1 diabetes mellitus. Trucco M, Giannoukakis N. Expert Opin Biol Ther. 2007 Jul;7(7):951-63.
Gene therapy for type 1 diabetes: is it ready for the clinic? D'Anneo A, Rood P, Bottino R, Balamurugan AN, He J, Giannoukakis N. Immunol Res. 2006;36(1-3):83-9.
Gene therapy for type 1 diabetes. Giannoukakis N, Trucco M. Am J Ther. (2005) Nov-Dec;12:512-28.
Interleukin-7 is a survival factor for CD4+ CD25+ T-cells and is expressed by diabetes-suppressive dendritic cells. Harnaha, J., Machen, J., Wright, M., Lakomy, R., Styche, A., Trucco, M. and Giannoukakis, N. Diabetes. (2006) 55:158-70.
FOOTER: a quantitative comparative genomics method for efficient recognition of cis-regulatory elements. Corcoran DL., Feingold E., Dominick, J., ,Wright M., Harnaha J., Trucco M., Giannoukakis N., Benos PV. Genome Research, 2005, 15(6): 840-847.
DNA vaccination with an insulin construct and a chimeric protein binding to both CTLA4 and CD40 ameliorates type 1 diabetes in NOD mice. Chang Y, Yap S, Ge X, Piganelli J, Bertera S, Giannoukakis N, Mathews C, Prud'homme G, Trucco M. Gene Therapy. (2005) 12(23):1679-85.
MHC tailored for diabetes cell therapy. Trucco M, Giannoukakis N. Gene Therapy. 2005, 12(7):553-554
Antisense oligonucleotides down-regulating costimulation confer diabetes-preventive properties to nonobese diabetic mouse dendritic cells. Machen J, Harnaha J, Lakomy R, Styche A, Trucco M, Giannoukakis N. J Immunol. 2004, 173(7):4331-4341.
Prolongation of islet allograft survival following ex vivo transduction with adenovirus encoding a soluble type 1 TNF receptor-Ig fusion decoy. Jennifer Machen, Suzanne Bertera, Yigang Chang, Rita Bottino, A N Balamurugan, Paul D. Robbins, M Trucco and Nick Giannoukakis (2004) Gene Therapy 11(20):1506-14.
Autoimmunity and gene therapy : the nemesis of autoimmunity (2004) Nick Giannoukakis and Masismo Trucco, Gene Therapy, 11(3) 231-232
