Type 1 diabetes affects more than 1.6 million people in the U.S., including a growing number of children and adolescents. The disease develops when the immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys the pancreatic islet cells, which are responsible for producing insulin. Left unchecked, this autoimmune process can lead to serious complications, including heart disease, kidney failure, vision loss, nerve damage, and an increased risk of stroke.
Jon Odorico, MD, Professor in the Division of Transplantation, has long pursued a breakthrough cure for Type 1 diabetes: creating a reliable supply of functional islets that can be transplanted to restore insulin production and potentially cure diabetes. One of the major hurdles in advancing this therapy is understanding and overcoming the immune system’s reaction to transplanted cells.
“Our immune system is designed to protect us from anything it perceives as foreign. Without immunosuppressive drugs, transplanted islets are quickly targeted and destroyed,” said Connie Chamberlain, PhD, Principal Scientist in Odorico’ s lab. “Because those medications carry significant risks, we’re exploring strategies to engineer islets that are derived from stem cells and that avoid triggering an immune response.”
Chamberlain, along with Jenny Gumperz, PhD, Professor in the UW Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, will serve as co-principal investigators on a new one-year, $50,000 Translational Basic & Clinical Research Pilot Award from the UW Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR). Odorico, whose lab has pioneered islet transplantation research, is also supporting the grant, underscoring the collaborative effort to advance therapies that can evade the immune system.
The team will examine how engineered islets evade the early stages of immune recognition and attack, an area that remains poorly understood. Insights from this work could accelerate the development of a universally compatible, immune-evasive islet therapy for Type 1 diabetes.
“This therapy represents a minimally invasive strategy to restore insulin production” Chamberlain said. “If successful, it could eliminate the need for lifelong immunosuppression and transform diabetes care. I’m incredibly grateful to ICTR for supporting this research.”