Research Description
In Type1 (juvenile) diabetes insulin producing cells in the pancreas are destroyed by a malfunctioning immune system. These insulin producing cells are destroyed gradually over many years prior to diabetes emerging. Drugs are being developed to halt this destruction. However there are no means to detect this destruction of insulin producing cells before diabetes arises. Nor is there a means to effectively evaluate whether a drug designed to halt this disruption is actually being effective. We have designed an approach that can monitor changes to the pancreas that result from the malfunctioning immune system and destruction of insulin producing cells. This approach is based on ultrasound imaging and therefore is safe and widely deployable. We propose to perform a series of clinical studies to test whether the approach we have designed can detect changes in the pancreas associated with the development of diabetes, and characterize factors that influence these measurement. This will have substantial benefits to diagnose diabetes development in advance and to evaluate the effectiveness of therapeutic treatments, thus benefiting the diagnosis, management and prevention of type1 diabetes.Research Profile
What area of diabetes research does your project cover? What role will this particular project play in preventing, treating and/or curing diabetes?This research project covers type1 diabetes and specifically the phase prior to diabetes onset where the underlying disease is present. This project will apply novel approaches to detect the underlying disease and thus guide treatments to prevent diabetes emerging.
If a person with diabetes were to ask you how your project will help them in the future, how would you respond?This project will contribute to efforts to prevent diabetes ever emerging. As such, it will help towards a world where others will not have to live with the burden and risks of diabetes like they have.
Why important for you, personally, to become involved in diabetes research? What role will this award play?Every day i walk past the waiting room where children and adults are seeing their physician to help them manage their diabetes. This always energizes me to try and find ways to help these children, adults and their family. This award will allows us to translate our findings towards clinical studies to help identify people at high risk for developing type1 diabetes who would benefit from therapeutic treatment to prevent diabetes.
In what direction do you see the future of diabetes research going?I think prevention of diabetes is a critical goal given the continuing increase in the incidence of both type1 and type2 diabetes. We have extensive knowledge of the pathogenesis of human type1 diabetes and more sophisticated targets and treatment strategies are under development. However we will need to focus these treatments early in disease development (as with many other diseases) for treatment to be effective. Thus, in addition to developing new treatment strategies we need to develop ways to practically guide these treatments.