Empowered Patient Podcast

Professor Piotr Trzonkowski, CEO of PolTREG, is focused on developing cell therapies for autoimmune diseases like type-1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis using polyclonal T-regulatory cell therapy. Treg cells are key in regulating the immune system and preventing autoimmune diseases. Clinical trials are showing promise for safe and effective treatments for preventing type-1 diabetes in pre-symptomatic patients and maintaining insulin production for years after treatment in those with this form of diabetes.   Piotr explains, "My initial research subject was vaccination in the elderly, and I was looking for the reasons they did not respond to the vaccine. It was initially on the flu vaccine. The same is valuable, for example, for the COVID-19 vaccine. What we found is that elderly people do not respond to the vaccines because of the high level of accumulation of T-regulatory cells. T-regulatory cells can suppress immune responses, which is bad for the elderly." "A very simple answer would be if you compare the