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Research Pathways
JDRF focuses on five clearly defined and complementary research pathways to take us most quickly towards a cure.
Beta cell regeneration
Beta cell regeneration aims to regenerate insulin producing cells in people who have diabetes. This involves triggering the body to grow its own new insulin producing cells, either by copying existing ones - some are usually still active, even in people who have had diabetes for decades - or causing the pancreas to create new ones. Finding a way to regenerate one's own cells and halting the immune attack to keep them alive would cure type 1 diabetes.
JDRF has formed a partnership with Transition Therapeutics to support the development of a drug that seems to promote new beta cell growth.
Beta cell replacement
This therapy would replace insulin-producing cells killed off by diabetes with functioning ones from a donor - similar to a heart or kidney transplant. This research is looking to improve transplantation techniques and also searching for a reliable supply of cells that can be transplanted. These could be from animals like pigs or by changing different types of cells, such as liver cells or stems cells, into insulin-producing cells.
JDRF's Australian Islet Transplantation Program has already conducted five successful transplants on patients using donor cells.
Halting the autoimmune attack
A key part of JDRF's research is aimed at stopping or reversing the immune system response that causes diabetes: the attack on insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas. This attack must be stopped so that any therapies involving replacing or regenerating insulin-producing cells can work long-term.
JDRF is currently funding Australian research through the Diabetes Vaccine Development Centre to create a vaccine to prevent the onset of type 1 diabetes in people genetically at risk of developing the disease.
Restoring metabolic control
Treatments that continually monitor the body's blood sugar levels and automatically respond with the correct dose of insulin would significantly enhance a person's control over their blood glucose levels.
JDRF is currently working with the best mathematicians at NASA to create an algorithm to link a pump and a continuous glucose monitor to create an 'artificial pancreas' which could release the right amount of insulin at the right time.
Predicting, treating and preventing complications
Diabetes-related complications include eye disease, nerve damage, kidney disease, and heart disease and stroke. A significant part of JDRF's research is focused on understanding how diabetes causes complications, and developing drugs, treatments, and therapies to stop that process, or reverse the impact of the different types of individual complications.
Many of the complication prevention drugs that are now commonly recommended by doctors were first discovered to be effective through JDRF-funded research.
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