(WXYZ) — Friday is World Diabetes Day and November is Diabetes Awareness Month, and with 1.5 million people in the U.S. living with type 1 diabetes (T1D).
Breakthrough T1D, which is the leading global T1D research and advocacy organization, is looking to the future of diabetes research while also encouraging people to get screened.
Related: November is National Diabetes Awareness Month: What to know about Type 1 Diabetes
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, which means your immune system has mistakenly identified the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas as a threat and attacks them. Eventually, a person produces very little insulin or none at all.
Joshua Vieth, the senior director of research at Breakthrough T1D, said that there are roughly 30 genes that have been associated for an increased risk of type 1 diabetes. However, not everyone who has those risks will go on to develop T1D because you need some sort of activating event.
Watch our interview with Vieth in the video below
Through early screening and testing, Vieth said that they look for autoantibodies.
"When you have two or more autoantibodies, you're at nearly a 100% chance of developing or being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes within 10 years," he said.
T1D also develops in stages over time. There are three stages, according to Vieth.
- Stage 1 is when there are multiple autoantibodies, but there are no symptoms and blood sugar is normal.
- Stage 2 is when there are autoantibodies present and the blood sugar is abnormal.
- Stage 3 is when autoantibodies are present, blood sugar is elevated and there are symptoms.
Vieth said that early screening is the "single most important thing" people can do to support therapies and move the field forward.
On top of early screening, Breakthrough is also working in a variety of other ways involving T1D, including disease-modifying therapies, which try to change the course of the disease, and working on cell replacement therapies.
Vieth said that the field has seen an incredible amount of advancement over the last three to five years.
Last year on World Diabetes Day, Breakthrough launched Project ACT, which stands for accelerate cell therapies.
"The goal of the cell therapy program is really to replace the insulin-producing cells that were lost, and to do so in a way that is sustainable and renewable," Vieth said.
It's a process where researchers are working with lab-derived islets and beta cells, according to Vieth, and then transplant those cells with the goal for people with T1D to eventually produce their own insulin again.
Breakthrough said the project brings in teams across the company, including research, regulatory, medical affairs and more, making it an organizational effort.
Thinking back to where we were a few years ago, Vieth said that researchers found at least nine or more different immune-type therapies that can preserve beta cells, meaning they can at least temporarily halt the progression of type 1 diabetes.
"We also know that in each of those studies, some people respond and some do not," he said.
He said that they're Breakthrough is working with their partners in a variety of industries – major pharma, the FDA and others – to move different therapies forward to benefit patients. He compared it to the research done involving cancer over the last decade, where clincal trials are testing different therapies together to see which gives the best response or prolongs the response.
"We're at a point now where the scientific capability has caught up. We have an approved therapy that's paved the way, and we're seeing an incredible amount of motivation amongst our academic researchers, our industry partners, our pharma partners, to move more therapies into the field," he said. "And I think it's going to be a bright few years for those living with type 1 diabetes, at risk of type 1 diabetes,or caring for somebody with type 1 diabetes.
According to Breakthrough's website, they are supporting 117 pre-clinical cell therapy research projects and five cell therapy clinical trials.
What does a cure look like for T1D? And is it possible?
"I think there is most certainly a potential for a cure," Vieth said.
However, he reminded people that there are so many factors involved in the process, from the speed of clinical trials to regulatory decisions, and so much more. Those are all things Breakthrough is working on.
"I can say that we're going to see more advancement, more breakthroughs in the next three to five years than we've seen in the last 10 to 15," Vieth said. "And that's really not wishful thinking. That's based upon what we see coming through the clinical pipeline, what the clinical trials we know that are going to report out, and the incredible research that we're funding and our partners are funding that that are continuing to drive this advancement."
