Our research projects

Having diabetes can lead to damaged blood vessels in the retina at the back of the eye, caused by high blood sugar levels. This can lead to vision problems and sight loss. Dr Judith Lechner wants to find out if a protective protein can be used to repair and reduce this damage, and potentially be used as a new treatment option in the future.

Some people develop type 1 diabetes very quickly, but in others, the immune attack that causes type 1 diabetes progresses slowly. Professor Kathleen Gillespie and her PhD student will look for genetic differences between these groups of people to find out why this is. In the future, this could lead to life-changing treatments to delay or prevent type 1 diabetes.

Weight loss can lead to remission of type 2 diabetes but losing weight can be difficult. Professor Jebb aims to create a new NHS support service for people newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and living with overweight or obesity, so they can try out different weight loss programmes and find the one that’s right for them. This could make all the difference in giving more people the chance to go into remission.

Sometimes insulin can cause cells to multiply rather than bringing down blood sugar levels. This can increase the risk of some cancers in people with diabetes. Prof Nia Bryant wants to better understand how and why insulin can have this effect. With her PhD student, she will pinpoint the specific areas on cells that causes insulin to lower blood sugars and not to tell cells to multiply. In the future, this could help scientists develop new treatments for people with diabetes that aren’t linked with an increased risk of cancer.

We know that a person’s genetic makeup is important in type 2 diabetes but we don’t know exactly how they’re linked. Dr Jennings is going to study genes related to beta cell and pancreas development and the 3D switches that control them. This will give us a better understanding of why type 2 diabetes develops, which could lead to new therapies to prevent and treat it. 

As type 2 diabetes develops, alpha cells in the pancreas fail. Professor Hodson has found that a protein called GC plays a key role in how alpha cells function. He will run experiments to figure out how the loss of GC impacts why alpha cells go wrong in type 2 diabetes. In the future, this could lead to new treatments for type 2 diabetes that help to keep alpha cells working and give people better blood sugar control. 

Insulin-making beta cells have recycling centres, called lysosomes, which help to break down waste inside our cells. When someone has type 2 diabetes, this process stops working properly. Dr Aida Martinez-Sanchez wants to investigate why this happens by studying the role a protein called M6PR, plays in controlling how lysosomes in beta cells behave. Understanding this could help researchers to develop better treatments for type 2 diabetes and improve those already available. 

Losing weight and going into remission can be a huge challenge for people living with type 2 diabetes, and isn’t possible for everyone. Dr William Scott wants to figure out exactly what goes on in fat tissue during weight loss, and how and why this can help people go into remission. A deeper understanding of this could help scientists to develop first-of-a-kind treatments for type 2 diabetes that aim to directly trigger remission.

Proteins are key to keeping insulin-making beta cells healthy. But in type 2 diabetes, something goes wrong with the process where beta cells make new proteins. Dr Daniela Nasteska will study this in detail to understand what goes wrong and how this leads to type 2 diabetes. This could pave the way to new treatments for type 2 diabetes and unlock better ways to grow beta cells in the lab, ready for transplant.