Scientists have been awarded £3m to develop new targeted drugs to help people with Diabetes to make their own insulin that could pave the way for a cure for the disease.
Researchers from the University of Nottingham's School of Pharmacy and University of Edinburgh have been awarded the funding as part of the Type 1 Diabetes Grand Challenge project to explore better and more innovative ways to improve the effectiveness of transplant islets, clusters of pancreas cells, into people with type 1 diabetes to enable them to make their own insulin.
The team are aiming to improve the benefits and availability of islet transplants by improving the drugs used as part of this treatment. The team will package microparticles with immune-altering and other drugs to improve the survival of transplanted islets. They will test different combinations of drugs in islet transplants in mice, to see which work best to help islets survive and control blood sugar levels.
The team will then run experiments to investigate how to scale up the dose of the drugs and how the treatment might work in humans and check if the most promising drug microparticle combinations also work to protect beta cells that have been grown in the lab from stem cells.
In an islet transplant, clusters cells (called islets) from a donor pancreas are transplanted into someone with type 1 diabetes and start to produce insulin. They're currently offered to some people with type 1 diabetes who have severe hypos and no awareness of them. However, usually about 60% of the donor cells die soon after transplant.
This means lots of donor islets are needed to have an impact on blood sugar levels. But with a limited number of donor pancreases available for islet transplantation, very few people with type 1 diabetes can currently benefit.
Improving the survival of donor islets could pave the way for a cure for type 1 diabetes. We are hugely excited to be able to work on this collaborative project to develop microparticle systems that will allow us to deliver new targeted drugs to allow islet transplants to be successful for everyone who needs them.
I hope the Grand Challenge's investment will give people living with type 1 diabetes hope that a cure can be achieved in their lifetime. The funding has allowed scientists from diverse fields to come together in this project with a common goal of doing some truly innovative research that will advance the field. By improving the benefits of human pancreas cell transplants, and in time transplants using stem cells, we hope to contribute towards a future where people with type 1 diabetes can live a life free from insulin injections.
