Dr. Will Valdar (Professor, Genetics and Biostatistics), together with Paul Watkins (Pharmacy) and Chengwen Li (Pediatrics), was awarded a new R01 MPI grant from NIDDK for their project titled “Genetic determinants of AAV liver transduction and toxicity”.
This four-year award starts 2/15/2026. The central hypothesis is that Collaborative Cross mice inter-strain susceptibility to AAV hepatotoxicity and transgene expression will be mirrored in cultured hepatocyte spheroids prepared from the strains and that combining in vivo and hepatocyte spheroid data will provide new insights that will improve the safety and efficacy of AAV gene therapy.