Our research projects

People with diabetes have a higher risk of getting more severe symptoms from common respiratory viruses, such as the common cold and flu, than people without diabetes. But we don’t yet understand why the immune systems of people with diabetes are less efficient at dealing with respiratory viruses, and why high blood sugars are linked to increased chance of severe symptoms. Dr Dominguez-Villar’s PhD student will work out how type 1 diabetes changes the way in which immune cells detect and fight respiratory infections.  

Professor Sattar will look at both the direct and indirect effects of the coronavirus pandemic for people with diabetes. He’ll find out if it has had an impact on risk factors for diabetes complications, and if there’s differences between different groups of people with diabetes. He’ll also explore the effects of having coronavirus on blood sugar levels. These insights could help us understand what needs to be done to minimise any negative consequences of the pandemic, to keep people with diabetes healthy for longer.  

Proteins, called GPCRs, play a role in controlling appetite and blood sugar levels. Dr Thompson wants to understand how the development of obesity and type 2 diabetes changes GPCR chemistry in the brain. Knowing this could help scientists to develop treatments that act on GPCRs to treat obesity and type 2 diabetes, giving people living with or at risk of these conditions new, urgently needed treatment options.

People with diabetes can develop problems with their feet, called neuropathy. Some people experience chronic pain alongside this, but we don’t yet know why. Professor David Bennet will use machine learning to identify risk factors for painful neuropathy and develop a ‘calculator’ that could help to spot people at risk. This research could help to develop new treatments and allow doctors to better support those at greatest risk.

Scientists can grow new insulin-producing beta cells in the lab, but they don’t work as well as ‘real’ beta cells. Dr Ildem Akerman will test out a new way to improve how we make lab-grown beta cells, she hopes this will make them work better and be more responsive to changes in blood sugar. In the future, we hope lab-grown beta cells could be transplanted into people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes to replace the cells that have been destroyed or stopped working, and this project could help us take a huge step towards that goal.

It’s possible to identify people who are very likely to develop type 1 diabetes by looking for signs in the blood that indicate the immune system has started to plan an attack on the pancreas. Professor Parth Narendran is exploring how a programme to test children for these signs and find out their risk of type 1 diabetes would best work in the UK.

The ELSA study will screen 20,000 children using a simple blood test. Screening can help to make sure children have the earliest, safest diagnosis possible. And children found to be at risk could be eligible for trials of promising new treatments. ELSA will give us vital insights that could help lead to a routine, widespread type 1 diabetes screening programme in the UK.

Scientists can test for signals made by the immune system, called autoantibodies, to help diagnose which type of diabetes someone has. And to help predict who is at risk of developing type 1 diabetes in the future. Professor Gillespie is exploring how to increase the accuracy of an autoantibody test and ready it for use in the NHS. This could lead to better ways of diagnosing and predicting type 1 and could give us new insights into the root causes of the condition. 

People living with insulin resistance can help to manage their blood sugar levels by making healthier food choices. But a hormone called oxytocin has been found to play a part in the foods we tend to prefer. Dr John Menzies wants to find out more about the link between oxytocin and insulin resistance. Understanding how different hormone levels change in diabetes will help researchers to develop new treatments helping people to make healthier food choices. 

Muscle damage is a common but under-studied complication of type 2 diabetes. It reduces mobility and can affect independence. Professor Lee Roberts will explore if a drug licensed to treat problems with how the body processes iron could help to improve muscle health and quality of life. This could improve our understanding of muscle damage in people with type 2 diabetes and provide us with better ways to treat it.

Dr Tim Tree and researchers across the UK will set up a network of specialist labs to examine samples from all UK-based trials of immunotherapies for type 1 diabetes. They will carry out state-of-the-art studies of their safety and effectiveness to understand exactly how treatments work to control the immune system, and who could benefit most from different treatments. In the future, immunotherapies could give us a way to prevent, halt and cure type 1 diabetes.