WHAT IS TYPE 1 DIABETES?
Type 1 Diabetes (T1D), also known as "juvenile diabetes", is a severe chronic disease that arises most often in children and adolescents.  It is caused by the immune-mediated attack on the pancreatic insulin-producing beta cells; which can also be described as when the immune system attacks cells of the body as if they were infected or foreign.  Despite insulin substitution regimens, the loss of insulin-producing cells can lead to kidney failure, heart disease, blindness and many other complications — all of which reduce quality of life and can very often shorten life expectancy.  To combat this disease and its complications, we must stop and re-educate the immune system, so that beta-cells are not being attacked and can be sustained in sufficient numbers for good health.

COMBINING IMMUNOLOGY AND BETA-CELL AUGMENTATION RESEARCH - A KEY LINK
The synergy between scientists in the two essential disciplines of immunology and beta-cell augmentation /regeneration is timely and highly desirable, because intricate links between the immune system and the beta cell need to be explored and better understood.  Beta cell replacement will not become a cure without keeping the autoimmune response in check and immune modulators alone will not be effective in patients who lost most beta cells.  In addition, the side effects from long-term immune suppression constitute an intolerable risk for type 1 diabetes patients. Therefore, a strong translational research focus of this center is the development of combination therapies. These will consist of a reduced course of systemic immunomodulation, agents that foster beta cell survival or replenishment and, most importantly, approaches that establish long-term beta-cell specific  tolerance.  The research on the induction of beta-cell specific  immune tolerance (involving DNA vaccinations to induce regulatory T cells and  similar approaches) is being conducted at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology, and carried out by a team led by Dr. Matthias von Herrath. Close collaborations with the Pediatric Diabetes Research Center, and some of the companies that bring such approaches to the clinic (NovoCell, BayHill Therapeutics and Genentech) have been established.