Audrey Parent, PhD

Audrey Parent is as Associate Professor in Diabetes Center. She obtained her PhD from the Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec in 2010 before joining the laboratories of Matthias Hebrok and Mark Anderson, where her research focused on immune tolerance with a particular interest in the thymus.

The long-term goal of her group is to better understand the role of central tolerance in the initiation of autoimmune diseases like T1D. To gain new insights into this process, they are using human pluripotent stem cell-derived thymic epithelial cells in combination with genome editing technologies to investigate defects in thymic function. In addition, her group is developing the therapeutic potential of their unique method to produce a functional stem cell-derived thymus, opening up the prospect of restoring thymic function in immunodeficient patients as well as correcting disease-causing thymic defects in patients with autoimmune diseases. Finally, her group is involved in collaborative and multidisciplinary efforts aimed at accelerating the clinical translation of stem cell-derived beta cells.