Year 1

We continue to make progress with our efforts to generate functional thymic epithelial cells that are derived from stem cell sources. Over the last year we have been able to improve our ability to differentiate thymic epithelial progenitors by using a 3-Dimenstional culture system. This system has improved our efficiency and we are currently further refining it for use in our differentiation method. In future years, this will help accelerate our progress in TEP generation. A second area that we have made progress in is the generation of a reporter stem cell line for a key transcription factor called FOXN1. These cells express a key marker that help tell us how well our protocol is working. Through the use of this new cell line we again have made substantial progress in our differentiation efficiency. In looking forward to the next years of funding, we are well positioned for our more elaborate experiments for looking at immune tolerance that is induced by our cells.