Thanks to your support, we’re advancing diabetes research that’s changing lives. Right now, we’re funding 112 remarkable diabetes research projects, including 21 new ones in 2025.
Each year, your generosity fuels our investment in exceptional science and innovative ideas with the potential to transform the lives of people living with diabetes.
In 2025, we committed £4.2 million into 21 exciting new research projects focused on treatments, management – and more – across all types of diabetes and its complications. And we’ve been tackling critical research gaps along the way to meet the needs of communities most impacted by diabetes.
But we didn’t stop there.
The Type 1 Diabetes Grand Challenge community is ever-growing with 23 pioneering research projects underway, involving 189 researchers and collaborators in 49 institutions across eight countries. In 2025, Grand Challenge researchers produced 28 novel publications in scientific journals. And we also funded four new research teams to build a dependable supply of insulin-making beta cells made from stem cells for UK researchers, and accelerate the development of beta cell therapies to cure type 1 diabetes.
Elsewhere, here’s a window into some of the projects you helped us fund in 2025.
We’re backing new studies into diabetes and wellbeing
Diabetes can have a big impact on emotional and psychological wellbeing.
Supporting wellbeing is one of four research priority areas in our refreshed Research Strategy 2025-2030.
We know that type 2 diabetes and depression are linked, but we don’t know the best way to treat the two conditions together.
In 2025, we started funding Dr Min Gao at the University of Oxford to find answers.
Dr Gao will analyse the results of studies which have explored the effects of different diabetes medications on depression.
She’ll also speak to people with type 2 diabetes and depression to understand their lived experiences and treatment expectations. This will help Dr Gao to decipher which diabetes medicines work most effectively to reduce the symptoms of depression in people living with type 2.
This research could improve current guidelines for type 2 and depression, equipping doctors with the tools to personalise treatments. The right medicines could help people to manage their blood sugar levels and depression, improving their overall quality of life.
We’re tackling inequity in women’s health
Our Tackling Inequity Strategy 2025-2030 lays out our dedication to overcome unfairness in diabetes care - because we know diabetes doesn’t affect everyone equally.
For example, women from South Asian backgrounds are more likely to develop gestational diabetes – and nearly twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes following gestational diabetes – than women from White backgrounds.
But research often treats South Asian communities as a single group, without considering the nuances that might shape different groups’ health – like culture, religion, or language.
So we’re funding a project led by Ifra Ali at the University of Warwick. She wants to explore the care that British-Pakistani women who’ve had gestational diabetes experience both during and after pregnancy.
Ifra will hear the women’s perspectives on the care they received to help understand their unique needs. Together with the women and healthcare professionals, she’ll develop ways to make care more tailored and supported to British-Pakistani women. This improved healthcare could protect their long-term health following pregnancy, lowering their type 2 risk.
Together, we’re funding research that’s unlocking new possibilities to improve the lives of people affected by diabetes and bringing hope for new treatments and a cure closer. We couldn’t do it without your support. Thank you.
