TILT: An Alliance with Ambitious Aims and the Talent to Achieve It.

Faculty members in Radiology are involved in several of the Alliance projects organized by the College of Medicine. One of the most ambitious of the Alliance groups is T Cells to Induce Liver Tolerance or TILT for short. The principal investigators of this alliance are (shown to the right) Roberto Gedaly, MD, Chief of the division of Transplantation from the Department of Surgery and Francesc Marti, PhD, an Associate Professor from the Department of Surgery. The TILT alliance supports translational and clinical research into the use of cell immunotherapy to induce greater tolerance in solid organ transplantation. The TILT alliance is currently running a clinical trial to investigate adaptive transfer of ex vivo expanded regulatory T cells (Tregs) in kidney transplant recipients.  

The TILT alliance has attracted several other ambitious and talented investigators. Dr. Aman Khurana from Department of Radiology and Dr. Fanny Chapelin from the Department of Biomedical Engineering joined the TILT alliance to help create an imaging-based cell-tracking system. These investigators are currently generating data addressing the implementation of a first-in-class clinical trial in liver transplant patients to induce hepatic tolerance. Currently, this collaboration focuses on the optimization and validation of a novel, non-invasive, cell tracking system for T cell-based immunotherapy. Chapelin and Khurana's approach boasts high sensitivity for detecting the presence of the labelled cells. This technology will be valuable for monitoring where the labelled T cells migrate.