Christine Beeton
Baylor College of Medicine, TX·Microbiology & Immunology
In autoimmune disease, the immune system attacks the body's own tissues, and roughly 50 million people in the United States live with at least one such condition. Many of the best modern treatments are biologics — drugs made of proteins or peptides rather than small chemicals — which must be injected weekly or more often.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Pharmacology
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
autoimmune disease
rheumatoid arthritis
multiple sclerosis
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jun 2030
What they work on
- Define the pharmacokinetics and biodistribution of ShK-235, a venom-derived peptide that blocks the Kv1.3 potassium channel, when secreted by the engineered probiotic LrS235 after oral administration in rats.
- Test whether orally delivered LrS235 prevents and treats disease in rat models of rheumatoid arthritis, including collagen-induced arthritis, by inhibiting activation of effector memory T lymphocytes.
- Define and optimize the efficacy and safety of probiotic-based gut delivery using Lactobacillus reuteri LJ01, a strain that survives transit through the gastrointestinal tract, as the peptide-secreting vehicle.
- Operate and expand the High-Parameter Cytometry Shared Resource, providing mass, imaging, spectral, and high-parameter cytometry plus cell sorting, training, and analysis support for cancer center investigators.
- Evaluate and develop new cytometry instrumentation capable of measuring beyond 50 parameters per single cell, including large- and small-particle and spectral approaches.
More about the research
Frequent injections are hard to keep up with, particularly for younger patients, and missed doses leave drug levels too low to work. Work here pursues a different delivery route and, through a shared instrumentation core, supports cell-analysis technology used across cancer research.
Why it matters
Patients with rheumatoid arthritis and other T-cell-driven autoimmune diseases currently rely on injected biologics given weekly or more often, and missed doses undercut treatment. A probiotic engineered to release an immune-modulating peptide in the intestine could, if proven, offer an oral alternative that is easier to stay on. The cytometry core supplies the single-cell analysis and sorting capacity behind a large volume of cancer research at its center.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Zoran Galic
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Provide cancer center investigators with flow cytometry, mass cytometry, imaging cytometry and cell sorting services using instruments such as the Helios mass cytometer, ImageStream imaging cytometer and Aria high-speed sorters.
Patrick Kellish
University of Florida, FL·Microbiology & Immunology
Provide multi-parameter flow cytometry and cell sorting, which reads marker proteins on individual cells and separates populations, to cancer center investigators as a cost-recovered shared service.
Zuhair Ballas
University of Iowa, IA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Provide cancer researchers with high-speed cell sorting, multi-parameter analysis and purification of specific cell subsets for basic and translational studies at the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The school
Baylor College of Medicine: 38 labs on PI Pages, $881M a year on research, 115 research doctorates a year.
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