BIOHACKER MEETING WITH PROF ANN SIMPSON

Professor Ann Simpson has also been Director of the Research Centre for Health Technologies since 2006. Prior to coming to UTS she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at both the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales.

At UTS Prof. Simpson is involved in teaching final year Science students Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Her current research interest is the gene therapy of diabetes mellitus. Specifically, her research is concerned with investigating the possibility of engineering an artificial insulin-producing cell to replace the insulin-secreting beta cells that have been destroyed by the autoimmune process in Type I diabetics.

The principle behind this approach is that non-pancreatic cells can be genetically altered to produce, store and secrete insulin to physiological stimuli such as glucose.