Gary Fathman

C. Garrison Fathman, MD, Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Immunology and Rheumatology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Emeritus

Research Description: Dr. Fathman is a clinician scientist who has made seminal discoveries in diabetes and translational research. Among Dr. Fathman’s contributions to his field is the initial cloning of CD4 T lymphocytes in 1978. Dr. Fathman was one of the first to use monoclonal antibodies to treat animal models of autoimmunity. He was the first to use anti-CD4 antibodies to treat NOD disease, and to block allograft transplant rejection in diabetic NOD. He was among the first to use peptides of autoantigens to treat autoimmune disease models. A major recent finding in diabetes research was the identification of a splice form of a gene that regulated a non-thymic mechanism for inducing or maintaining peripheral tolerance in NOD that had similar isoform in human T1D that seemed to mimic the NOD gene function. He is currently using gene expression of peripheral blood cells in T1D patients and first-degree relatives to identify biomarkers of disease risk and progression. Recent studies in his lab have identified a common correctable defect in IL-2R signaling in regulatory T cells from patients with T1D. A small molecule drug that corrects this defect was successful in blocking progression to hyperglycemia in prediabetic NOD mice.

Selected relevant publications (Stanford DRC Members in BOLD):

  1. Yip L, Fuhlbrigge R, Alkhataybeh R, Fathman CG. Gene Expression Analysis of the Pre-Diabetic Pancreas to Identify Pathogenic Mechanisms and Biomarkers of Type 1 Diabetes. Front Endocrinol (Lausanne). 2020 Dec 23;11:609271. doi: 10.3389/fendo.2020.609271. PMID: 33424774; PMCID: PMC7793767. 

  2. Soares L, Yip L, Hurt CR, Fathman CG. A Common Druggable Defect in Regulatory T Cells from Patients with Autoimmunity. Crit Rev Immunol. 2020;40(3):185-193. doi: 10.1615/CritRevImmunol.2020034631. PMID: 33389883. 

  3. Yip L, Fuhlbrigge R, Atkinson MA, Fathman CG. Impact of blood collection and processing on peripheral blood gene expression profiling in type 1 diabetes. BMC Genomics. 2017 Aug 18;18(1):636. doi: 10.1186/s12864-017-3949-2. PMID: 28821222; PMCID: PMC5563008.