Our research projects

Our cells have engines, called mitochondria, which power them. In insulin-making cells, the mitochondria tell the cells how and when to release insulin. When blood sugar levels are high, for example when someone has type 2 diabetes, this process stops working properly. Dr Aida Martinez-Sanchez wants to investigate why this happens by studying how the gene Mtfp1 plays a part how beta cell mitochondria behave. Understanding this could help researchers to develop better treatments that may stop type 2 diabetes from progressing.

Type 1 diabetes develops when a person’s immune system attacks and destroys their insulin-making beta cells. Dr Leete will study pancreas samples from people with type 1 diabetes to figure out why the immune system turns on beta cells, and how this process may differ between people, especially those diagnosed at different ages. In the future this could lead to more personalised treatments to delay or prevent type 1 diabetes.

The brain has an important role in measuring and controlling blood sugar levels. In people with diabetes this can go wrong when the brain chooses a level that’s too high. Dr Clemence Blouet wants to find out if there’s a way of developing new treatments that can reprogramme the brain to keep blood sugar at safer levels.

High blood sugar levels can affect the way kidney cells talk to each other, which can lead to kidney damage. Professor Claire Hills wants to understand the different languages that kidney cells speak and which ones are dangerous to kidney cell health. This will help researchers to create new treatments that translate or stop the dangerous languages and reduce the risk of complications in people living with diabetes.

Beta cells release insulin into the blood stream, but this complex process isn’t well understood. Dr Benoit Hastoy wants to investigate the process in more detail, to try and improve the effectiveness of existing treatments for people with type 2 diabetes.

Our scientists have shown that some adults with type 2 diabetes can go into remission through a low-calorie weight management programme. Dr Sachdev will now explore if the same approach is possible in children with type 2 diabetes. This could lead to a much-needed new treatment that gives children with type 2 the chance to go into remission and the opportunity for a healthier future.  

Immunotherapies work by retraining the immune system, and scientists hope they can stop or prevent the immune attack behind Type 1 diabetes. Clinical trials testing immunotherapies are going on right now, but we don’t have a good way of measuring how effective a treatment is.

Professor Colin Dayan will combine different measurements to develop a score that indicates how successful the drugs are. This could speed up progress and help to make these treatments available for people with Type 1 sooner.

Losing sensation in the feet is one of the most common diabetes complications. It's often diagnosed too late and, in the most serious cases, can result in amputation. So it is vitally important to find a way to predict who’s at risk as soon as possible. Professor Robyn Tapp is testing whether photos taken at the annual eye screening for people with diabetes could be used as an early warning system to identify people at high risk of foot problems, and prevent complications.

Some people with type 2 diabetes are treated with drugs called SGLT2 inhibitors. As well as lowering blood sugar levels, these seem to keep the heart and kidneys safe from damage caused by inflammation. Professor Claire Hills wants to figure out how they protect kidney cells. Her work could help make sure more people benefit from SGLT2’s and could unlock new treatments that tackle inflammation and further reduce the risk of complications. 

In diabetes, insulin-making beta cells in pancreas have either been destroyed or don’t work properly. Dr Liu is researching a molecule called miR-33 to see if blocking it could help beta cells to work better. This could lead to new treatments for type 2 diabetes and improvement transplants of beta cells for people living with type 1.