UF College of Medicine postdoc researches stem cells to address Type 1 diabetes
Jessie Barra, Ph.D., investigates stem cells that can replace beta cells lost in Type 1 diabetes patients
Jessie Barra, Ph.D.
March 18, 2026 — Autoimmune diseases like Type 1 diabetes remain among the most common yet least understood disorders in medicine. In the chronic disease, the immune system mistakenly kills the healthy beta cells in the pancreas that make insulin, the body’s blood sugar-level regulator. If left untreated, this loss of insulin can lead to life-threatening conditions and serious long-term complications.
With more than 2 million Americans living with Type 1 diabetes, scientists are still exploring the precise mechanisms driving it.
Jessie Barra, Ph.D., a postdoctoral associate in the lab of Holger Russ, Ph.D., an associate professor in the in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, recently received the prestigious 2026 Pathway to Stop Diabetes Initiator Award from the American Diabetes Association in support of her work to better understand how Type 1 diabetes attacks the immune system.
More about the UF Diabetes Institute
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Home to the largest tissue biobank for Type 1 diabetes
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No. 4 among the world’s top recipients of Breakthrough T1D research funding
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Hosts one of the leading clinical translational research programs in the U.S. in Type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease
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125+ investigators working to prevent, diagnose and treat diabetes
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All 67 Florida counties involved in UF’s diabetes prevention initiatives
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$30+ million annual investigator funding
Providing up to two years of mentored postdoctoral funding and up to five years of support once recipients establish their own laboratories, this highly competitive award supports late-stage postdoctoral fellows as they transition to independent faculty roles.
At UF, one of the nation’s leading diabetes research institutions and home of the UF Diabetes Institute, Barra focuses on human pluripotent stem cells and regenerative medicine approaches. Scientists have spent the past two decades developing methods to generate insulin-producing beta cells from stem cells in the laboratory, with the long-term goal of transplanting those cells into patients who have lost their own beta cells due to autoimmunity.
Barra’s work builds on that progress while addressing a critical question: how to protect newly generated beta cells from immune destruction.
For her Pathway to Stop Diabetes award, Barra proposed using genome engineering strategies in stem cells to express an immune-suppressive receptor known as CD155. The goal is to dampen immune responses, particularly from T cells that directly kill insulin-producing cells in Type 1 diabetes.
“CD155 basically tells T cells to shut down and to stop attacking,” said Barra, who
received her Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “By strengthening this signal, we seek to trick the immune system into ignoring the transplanted cells.”
She will turn those engineered stem cells into insulin-producing beta cells and then expose them to specific immune cells designed to mimic the type of immune attack seen in patients.
“I’ll use this strategy to understand how immune-suppressing engineered cells respond when they encounter different types of attacking immune cells,” she said. “We’re pushing the boundaries of what is experimentally possible, as very few systems are currently available to test these pressing questions.”
While her Pathway to Stop Diabetes proposal centered on a focused experimental question, Barra emphasized potential future implications of her investigation.
“The systems I propose to use set the baseline for allowing an interrogation of human immunology and autoimmunity that will have a much wider impact on the field and will hopefully help in advancing personalized medicine approaches,” she said.
