In type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks and destroys the cells in the pancreas that make insulin, called beta cells. Without these cells, you can’t produce your own insulin and need to replace it with insulin via injections or a pump.

Insulin therapy is the main treatment for type 1 diabetes, but it doesn’t treat the root cause of the condition – the immune attack on the beta cells. To cure or prevent type 1, we need to treatments that get to the root of the problem.

The Challenge

The development of type 1 diabetes is driven by a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors, causing the immune system to mistakenly target and destroy beta cells. The Type 1 Diabetes Grand Challenge is investing in research to learn more about precisely what goes wrong and how this process unfolds. This knowledge will allow the development of more and better treatments to hold off the immune system attack in type 1 diabetes.

Rachel Connor, Director of Research Partnerships at Breakthrough T1D UK, said:

“Through this funding, we are tackling the immune system dysfunction that is at the root of type 1 diabetes. We are investing in research to speed the development of therapies that can change the course of type 1 diabetes. Slowing and ultimately stopping the immune attack that drives the development of type 1 is critical to delivering not only therapies that can help people in the early stages of developing type 1 but also in understanding how to deliver effective cures to those who already have the condition, by ensuring cell based therapies can evade autoimmune destruction.”

Dr Elizabeth Robertson, Director of Research, Diabetes UK, said:

“The era of being able to halt the immune attack behind type 1 diabetes is in reach, but for everyone to benefit we need an armory of new treatments that can tackle the immune system’s many lines of attack. Research funded by the Type 1 Diabetes Grand Challenge is helping to us move to a future where we have therapies to restore balance to the immune system and no one faces the burden of living with type 1 diabetes.”

Understanding how type 1 diabetes develops

We’re delving deeper than ever before into the root cause of type 1 diabetes to reveal all the many ways the immune system can attack beta cells.

We’re funding Professor Sarah Richardson at the University of Exeter to study rare pancreas samples in minute detail to uncover how and why the immune system malfunctions in type 1 diabetes, and how this differs among individuals. Learn more about Prof Richardson’s research project.

Immunotherapies

New treatments called immunotherapies are designed to reprogramme the immune system to stop it attacking and destroying insulin-making beta cells. They’re being tested in clinical trials right now with people recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and in people in the early stages of the condition.

Scientists have shown immunotherapies can help to slow down the attack, delaying the onset of the condition in people who are in its early stages or protecting surviving beta cells in people who are newly diagnosed. But current immunotherapies can’t keep the immune system’s attack at bay forever. And how well they work seems to vary between different people.

The Type 1 Diabetes Grand Challenge is funding world class scientists to build on the impressive progress we’ve seen in this area to unlock the potential of immunotherapies to prevent and form part of a cure for type 1 diabetes. Learn about our research projects testing and improving immunotherapies in our funded projects section under ‘Root Causes Programme Grant’.

As well as putting immunotherapies through their paces, we’re exploring whether an existing medicine could reverse the steps that lead to type 1 diabetes. Prof Eoin McKinney’s Grand Challenge project is using a sophisticated AI tool to scour databases and match immune cell changes in type 1 with existing drugs that could combat them.