JDRF - Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation

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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Are you under 30 years of age and have a relative with type 1 diabetes? Perhaps you have type 1 diabetes yourself and have family members that would like to make a contribution towards a cure.

The Type 1 Diabetes Prevention Trial is an exciting study being run across Australia and New Zealand by the Diabetes Vaccine Development Centre (DVDC). Investigators are using an insulin nasal spray vaccine to try to protect people who are genetically at risk of type 1 diabetes.

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JDRF-funded researchers at the University of Queensland have launched a clinical trial into a new blood test they hope will be able to accurately predict people at risk of type 1 diabetes.

The test is the result of research that has identified a link between the onset of type 1 diabetes and a special type of protein called NF-Kappa B. In a healthy immune system, this protein is an important component of the immune response to infection. In people with type 1 diabetes, and seemingly also in people at risk of developing type 1 diabetes, this protein is constantly activated resulting in the autoimmune destruction of the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas.

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For many years, researchers have suspected that bacteria, viruses and other micro-organisms play an important role in the development of autoimmune conditions such as type 1 diabetes. This “hygiene hypothesis” postulates that our decreasing exposure to a lower amount of bugs and germs may leave some people more susceptible to autoimmune attacks.

A team of researchers from Yale University in the US have leant further support to this hypothesis by demonstrating that a certain strain of research mice were far more likely to develop type 1 diabetes when raised in a special germ-free environment as opposed to normal laboratory conditions.

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