Type 1 diabetes vaccine could be available within ten years

A fresh wave of investment into developing a diabetes vaccine has been announced by Diabetes Care, with the charity optimistic that a solution for Type 1 diabetes can be achieved ‘within a generation’.

Co-funded with support from Tesco and JDRF, the £4.4m investment will finance ten years of new studies, targeting the first ever trial of a prototype vaccine. Researchers will focus on delaying or even preventing Type 1 diabetes, which will include working with treatments that reduce damage to insulin-producing cells caused by the immune system.

Dr Alasdair Rankin, Diabetes UK’s director of research, comments: “This research, which has been made possible thanks to funding from Tesco and additional support from JDRF, is hugely exciting because it has the potential to transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of people living with Type 1 diabetes, as well as leading us towards a longed-for cure.

“Today, Type 1 diabetes is an unavoidable condition with a huge impact on the lives of more than 300,000 people in the UK. Managing diabetes is a daily struggle and too many people develop devastating health complications or die before their time. These studies will take us a long way towards changing that – bringing us closer than ever to preventing and ultimately curing the condition.

“None of this will be easy or happen overnight. The first vaccines will probably help people to delay the onset of Type 1 diabetes rather than preventing it entirely. But even this would help to reduce the risk of serious complications, such as stroke, blindness and heart attacks. In the longer term, a fully effective vaccine would represent a huge medical breakthrough and could transform the lives of people with Type 1 diabetes.”

Further interesting developments are to include the establishment of a UK-wide network so that ‘immuno-therapy’ trials can take place in hospitals, which will mean training young doctors and researchers in carrying them out. Adults newly-diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes may also be offered the chance to take part in clinical trials and a network of specialist laboratories will be set up in order to assess the impact.

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Professor Colin Dayan, of Cardiff University, says, “This funding has already led to a bold new collaboration between UK diabetes scientists and will provide an immense boost for this field as we work towards new clinical trials and a step change in our ability to halt the loss of insulin in Type 1 diabetes. Within a year or two we will see many more children and adults taking part in this research. Within four years we expect to see results from studies of more than six potential treatments, and within ten years we hope to see the first vaccine therapies delivered to patients in the clinic.”

Karen Addington, chief Executive of JDRF in the UK, also comments: “We are thrilled to collaborate with Diabetes UK with support from Tesco on this important research. A child diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of five faces up to 19,000 injections and 50,000 finger pricks by the time they are 18. Our major search for a vaccine takes place within a global push, by some of the world’s very best scientists, to consign this life-threatening condition to history. The day will come when Type 1 diabetes can be both prevented and cured.”