JDRF - Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation

JDRF-funded Australian researchers have identified a simple cellular compound that may be able to prevent onset of type 1 diabetes by preventing or reducing the death of insulin-producing cells.

Researchers from the Australian National University have identified heparan sulfate (HS) as being essential for beta cell survival. Whilst this compound is known to be involved in a number of other biological activities, this is the first time it has been implicated in the development of type 1 diabetes.

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JDRF-funded American researchers have created the first three dimensional cellular videos showing what happens to cells in the pancreas as type 1 diabetes develops. The videos show T cells (purple) attacking and destroying beta cells (green) – eventually leading to type 1 diabetes.

Some of the interesting insights gained include:

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JDRF today announced the two winners of the 2011 JDRF Macquarie Group Foundation Diabetes Research Innovation Awards.

The Awards recognise two outstanding researchers in type 1 diabetes with the publication or patent demonstrating the highest innovation, impact and importance in the 2010 calendar year.

Winner – Established Researcher – Dr David O’Neal
Winner – Early Career Researcher – Helen Thomas PhD

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JDRF-funded researchers from Israel have released the results of a five-year study in which they successfully used a new class of drug to trick mice with diabetes to re-grow their own insulin-producing beta cells.

It has been known for some time that glucose is a key factor in the growth of beta cells. However, it’s not as simple as increasing blood glucose to re-grow beta cells, because inducing high levels of glucose in the blood has serious health implications that can include blindness, stroke and kidney failure.

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Researchers from the Garvan Institute in Sydney have found a drug that may remove the need for immunosuppression following islet transplantation.

The JDRF-funded researchers developed a ‘reagent’ or chemical agent that allowed mice with diabetes to accept donor cells from an islet transplantation as their own, with no need for immunosuppressive drugs.

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JDRF has announced a new partnership with Eli Lilly and Company in the United States to fund early-stage research aimed at re-growing those cells that are destroyed when a person has type 1 diabetes.

The partnership will support a three-year, $1.4 million pre-clinical research program at the University of Geneva, led by Dr. Pedro Herrera.

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Serotonin is commonly known as “the happy hormone” for its role in managing and moderating human behavior and mood but a recent discovery by JDRF scientists have shown that it also plays a rather different role – triggering the growth of new beta cells in pregnant women.

It’s been known for a while that women can produce new beta cells to allow for the increase in insulin needed to supply energy during pregnancy but how this happens has been a mystery. In an exciting new discovery, a team of JDRF researchers have identified key steps in this process and shown that serotonin is one of the triggers.

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JDRF researchers from Canada show that a new vaccine can cure type 1 diabetes in mice and slow the onset of the condition in mice at risk of the disease.

Type 1 diabetes is caused when a persons own immune system attacks and destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Whilst the precise trigger of this attack is still unproven, researchers do know that there are certain immune cells that play a more important role than others. The challenge is to target the “bad” cells without harming the good cells that protect us from day-to-day infections.

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JDRF researchers have shown for the first time that other pancreas cells can spontaneously re-program themselves to produce insulin without the need for complex genetic modification or surgical transplantation.

Under healthy conditions, beta cells regenerate slowly to respond to increased insulin requirements or to replace those lost by injury. In the case of type 1 diabetes however, the beta cells are destroyed faster than they can naturally regenerate.

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JDRF funded research in the US has found that a hormone associated with the body’s fight or flight instinct prompts beta cells to grow and to produce insulin.

These findings reinforce the potential of regeneration as a cure for diabetes and provide insights for discovering new approaches to treat people with diabetes by restoring or regenerating their ability to produce insulin.

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