Leonardo Ferreira

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT LEONARDO FERREIRA

Cell-based gene therapies offer unprecedented promise for medicine. One day, it may be possible to cure degenerative diseases that consist of the loss of one or several specialized cell functions, as well as to decelerate the deterioration our bodies experience during aging. However, several hurdles must be surpassed to establish cell transplantation therapies, a major one being rejection by the recipient\'s immune system. This challenge is particularly prominent for autoimmune disorders, such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, where the immune system mediates the destruction of self-tissues. During my PhD, in the laboratories of Jack Strominger and Chad Cowan at Harvard University, I worked on transcriptional regulation in human pregnancy, a long-standing enigma in immunology and a seldom studied model of immune tolerance. In addition, I was the first to show successful genome editing in primary human T cells and hematopoietic stem cells using CRISPR/Cas9 and was part of a team creating universally compatible human pluripotent stem cells. As a postdoctoral scholar in the laboratories of Qizhi Tang and Jeff Bluestone at the University of California San Francisco, I used CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene knock-in to replace the endogenous T cell receptor (TCR) gene with an anti-HLA-A2 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) gene in primary human regulatory T cells (Tregs), creating CAR Tregs with suppressive function specifically upon recognizing HLA-A2 that traffic to transplanted HLA-A2+ human islets. Currently, I am an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina and the Hollings Cancer Center. My goal is to design and develop engineered immune cell therapies for autoimmune disease, cancer, and aging. I envision that we will be able to use our capacity to engineer the human genome with high precision and efficiency to manipulate our immune system, enabling us to treat devastating illnesses now labeled as incurable. I am highly committed to make that vision become a reality.