Mouse regulatory T cell and human T cell, courtesy NIAID.

The autoimmune attack that triggers type 1 diabetes has been beaten in the non-obese diabetic mouse, the best animal model of the disease.

More than 500 times, in fact, notes Jay Skyler, professor of medicine at the University of Miami.

But in humans: never.

Researchers have painstakingly picked apart the genetics of the disease and many of the intricacies of the immune attack that wipes out insulin-creating cells in the pancreas. And recent studies suggest that we might, just might, have a smoking gun in the form of disease-triggering populations of gut microbes. But we don’t really know the trigger mechanisms and we really can’t stop the disease.

However, as Skyler reviewed the disappointing decades of type 1 trials in a lecture last week at Joslin Diabetes Center, he pointed out research approaches that might lead closer to a cure.

Among them: examining the effects of treatments by subgroups (such as age), coordinating dosing with the timing of immune events, and administering multiple doses or higher doses of a drug.

Given the unending complexity of the immune system, though, maybe the most promising strategy is to hit it at multiple points. That’s the thinking behind Skyler’s upcoming Diabetes Islet Preservation Immune Treatment (DIPIT) trial.

DIPIT will compare two groups of people recently diagnosed with type 1, one group given five drugs and the other a placebo. The drugs, all giving hints of helpfulness in earlier type 1 trials and approved by the Food and Drug Administration for other conditions, are

• anti-thymocyte globulin (an antibody used to prevent rejection in organ transplants)
• etanercept (which inhibits tumor necrosis factor, a master regulator of immune response)
• pegylated granulocyte colony stimulating factor (a growth factor that boosts production of certain white blood cells)
• Interleukin 2 (a cytokine whose effects include increasing growth of the regulatory T cells that can guard against autoimmune onslaughts), and
• exenatide (a synthetic hormone that boosts glucose-dependent insulin secretion).

As Skyler told the Miami Herald, “we have one drug to stop the cavalry; one drug to stop the artillery; two drugs that help bring in support systems that favor the immune response; and one drug that helps beta cell health so they can resist the attack better.”

When he first proposed this kitchen-sink idea, “everybody said I was crazy,” Skyler remarked to his Joslin audience. The trial did get FDA approval. He’s still looking for funding, though.

Okay, let’s contrast these combinations with those in another arena of biomedical research that’s almost the reverse of type 1: cancer immunotherapy.

This field tries to activate (rather than suppress) the immune system at multiple points. Also unlike the case with type 1 and other autoimmune diseases, it is awash in drug-discovery money.

In fact, we’re living in the breakthrough decade for cancer immunotherapy. The two clear winners so far are CAR-T cells (chimeric antigen receptor T cells, in which a patient’s own cells are re-engineered to seek and destroy blood cells gone bad) and checkpoint blockade drugs (which prevent tumors from presenting false IDs).

The first checkpoint blockade drug approved by the FDA targets CTLA-4, a surface receptor on T cells and B cells. About a fifth of advanced melanoma patients given the drug survive for ten years with no further treatment. And in clinical trials, combining a CTLA-4 inhibitor with a drug that clogs up another checkpoint receptor, PD-1, has significantly broadened the population of survivors.

Combination is a familiar theme in cancer treatment, since tumors are so adept at evolving to resist whatever you throw at them. There are very high hopes for adding immunotherapies to the mix.

And in that mix, proven treatments like checkpoint blockaders will be joined by other drugs that hit different points of immune activation. There’s much excitement, for instance, about agents that activate the STING (stimulator of interferon genes) pathway, which can kick off defenders in both the innate and the adaptive immune systems and maybe act as a kind of cancer vaccine.

In both cancer and diabetes, nothing will be easy in bringing combination therapies into clinical trials and then ideally into regular practice. Researchers must identify exactly which patients might benefit from which combos, juggle drug dosages and timing, watch for serious side effects and struggle to quantify any improvements in health. These will be long rough roads. But for some patients, we hope, combos will lead to cures.