Updates on progress in research against type 1 diabetes.

JDRF New England’s annual research briefing offers a quick summary of research for type 1 diabetes. Here are four snapshots from last night’s talks by JDRF’s Julia Greenstein and University of Colorado’s Peter Gottlieb:

1. The march continues toward an “artificial pancreas” that automatically provides just the right amounts of insulin around the clock. The first of four NIH-sponsored pivotal clinical trials kicked off in February. Many of us are most intrigued by the Beta Bionics combo device, designed to deliver both insulin (which lowers blood glucose levels) and glucagon (which raises them). This device is a few years behind some of its competitors, but we like it for the same reason we would prefer a self-driving car with brakes.

2. JDRF has awarded more than 50 grants for research on encapsulating insulin-producing beta cells derived from stem cells, to initiatives such as the Boston Autologous Islet Replacement Therapy Program. News from the much-watched Viacyte clinical trial, however, is not so good. The Viacyte capsule prevents against some immune response but generates a foreign-body reaction. Next–generation encapsulation technologies may do better on immune response but must still grapple with another fiendishly tricky issue—admitting suitably high levels of oxygen to the beta cells. (The pancreas is even hungrier for oxygen than the brain, Greenstein noted.)

3. For decades, immunologists in both cancer and autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes made important discoveries that didn’t translate into better treatments. That unhappy situation has changed bigtime with cancer immunology, and diabetes researchers are now adopting two general strategies in cancer treatment. One strategy is to recognize that the disease may work quite differently in different people—for example, in trials of drugs designed to delay or prevent progression of the disease, often one group responds much better than another. So “personalized medicine”, tailored to specific groups of patients, may recast the field in type 1 just as it has done with many forms of cancer. The second strategy aims to confront the complexity of the disease by combining treatments, as the University of Miami’s Jay Skyler has proposed.

4. No clear winners have ever emerged from the dozens of trials of drugs designed to delay or prevent type 1 diabetes onset. One contender that’s still standing is oral insulin acting as a vaccine. Drug companies have chased the elusive goal of an insulin pill for a century (with a few recent signs of progress) but such pills typically get ripped apart in your gut without lowering your blood glucose levels. However, the resulting fragments of insulin may generate an anti-immune protective response in the pancreas. Early clinical tests of this vaccine concept (such as this one reported in 2015) have shown promise for some patients. The latest clinical results, including early findings from a phase II trial with higher doses, will be announced on June 12^th at the American Diabetes Association annual scientific sessions. We’ll be watching!