Our research projects

It’s possible to identify people who are in the earliest stages of type 1 diabetes by looking for signs in the blood that indicate the immune system has started to attack the pancreas. Professor Parth Narendran is exploring how a programme to screen children for these signs and find out their risk of type 1 diabetes would best work.

The ELSA study will screen 60,000 children using simple blood tests. This will give us vital insights that could help lead to a routine, widespread type 1 diabetes screening programme in the UK. Screening can help to make sure families are forewarned and prepared, so a type 1 diabetes diagnosis doesn't have to start with a crisis. It could also give children the opportunity to access new treatments that delay the need for insulin therapy.

Researchers are building AI-powered tools that can identify people most at risk of diabetes complications before they develop. Dr Rebecca Thomas is exploring how people with diabetes feel towards AI being used in this way, and receiving results about their future complications risk. This will inform recommendations on how to communicate AI-driven risk predictions in a way that builds trust and understanding, supporting both physical health and emotional well-being.

British-Pakistani women are at particularly high risk of developing gestational diabetes and type 2 later in life, so there’s a need to better understand such risks and how we could better support them. But existing research does not reflect the differences within South Asian communities or address their specific needs. The project aims to better understand how British-Pakistani women experience care during and after pregnancy, and how well current services support them. The findings will help improve healthcare and develop more effective and supportive ways to prevent type 2 diabetes in this group. 

In people living with type 2 diabetes, platelets in the blood are more likely to clot, putting them at a higher risk of heart attack than people without diabetes. Dr Allan is seeing whether an existing type 2 treatment, semaglutide, could also protect people against heart damage. This could improve people’s health and mean they need to take less medications, easing the day-to-day-burden of living with type 2 diabetes. 

Type 3c diabetes develops because of damage to the pancreas. It often goes misdiagnosed and there’s no tailored treatment or care for people living with it. Professor James Shaw is testing existing drugs to see if they could help to repair the pancreas and boost insulin production. This research could pave the way for more effective treatments, helping those with type 3c diabetes better manage their blood sugar levels.

A potential transformative treatment for type 1 diabetes is to replace insulin-making beta cells that have been destroyed with new ones, so that people can make their own insulin again. Professor Shanta Persaud is testing a new and improved method to grow new beta cells in the lab from stem cells. Having an unlimited supply of lab-made beta cells would bring us closer to a cure for type 1 diabetes, and this project could see us get there sooner. 

High blood sugar levels can lead to damage to our eyes, known as retinopathy. Professor Karl Matter thinks that a protein called MarvelD3, which helps cells to stick together in blood vessels, might hold some answers. His research could give us valuable new insights to help develop innovative approaches to protect blood vessels and prevent sight loss in people with diabetes.

Professor Timothy Tree and researchers across the UK will set up a network of specialist labs to examine samples from all UK-based trials of immunotherapies for type 1 diabetes. They will carry out state-of-the-art studies of their safety and effectiveness to understand exactly how treatments work to control the immune system, and who could benefit most from different treatments. In the future, immunotherapies could give us a way to prevent, halt and cure type 1 diabetes.

The pancreas-liver-gut axis are a group of organs that work together to control blood sugar levels. Changes in blood flow in these organs have been found in type 2 diabetes. Professor Murphy plans to understand these blood flow changes better and see if they hold the answer to improving current type 2 diabetes treatments or finding new ones. 

In many types of diabetes, insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas become stressed and damaged. Professor Terence Herbert has found that a group of molecules called RNA binding proteins (RBPs) may play an important role in helping beta cells survive this stress. In this project, his PhD student will explore how these proteins work and whether they could help protect beta cells and to prevent or slow the progress of diabetes.