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Home > News & events > News > Partnership funding autoimmune research now has over 10 members
Myaware, the only charity in the UK focusing on people affected by myasthenia, is the latest organisation to join Connect Immune Research. Growing the pool of experts dedicated to finding a root cause of auto immune conditions accelerates us towards innovative new ways of treating autoimmunity.
Connect Immune Research is a revolutionary partnership of organisations that research autoimmune conditions, where the body’s immune system attacks its own cells rather than viruses and bacteria. The initiative pools resources from the member organisations to fund vital research into the overlapping biology of autoimmune conditions. The more organisations we have working together, the closer we’ll be to achieving our common goal of understanding and treating the causes of autoimmunity.
JDRF UK, Versus Arthritis, the MS Society and the British Society for Immunology founded Connect Immune Research with the mission to find shared causes of autoimmune conditions. Having recruited seven new members, the partnership now stands at 11 autoimmune research organisations, demonstrating the value the research community sees in working beyond individual conditions to tackle autoimmunity.
Dr David Coutts, Senior Research Manager at the MS Society, said: “We’re delighted to welcome myaware to our Connect Immune Research partnership. Around four million people in the UK have an autoimmune condition like multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis or type 1 diabetes, and up to a third of people live with more than one of these conditions at once. Research into autoimmune conditions often only looks at a single condition, like MS, or a single organ, like the brain. We believe by linking up research and looking for common threads, we’ll be better able to treat these conditions in the future.
“As well as speeding up research into new treatments for millions of people with autoimmune conditions, the approach could also dramatically reduce costs. We want autoimmunity to be recognised as a distinct area of research science, alongside the likes of cancer, infectious disease and dementia.”
Myasthenia is a group of conditions, most of which are autoimmune, causing weakness in the body’s voluntary muscles and the muscles that control breathing.
Myaware, whose tagline fighting myasthenia together aligns closely with the values of Connect Immune Research, are the latest charity to join the partnership.
The wide range of organisations now united to tackle autoimmunity expands our portfolio of expertise and boosts our research prospects. Ultimately, this will help us gain crucial insights about autoimmunity that could lead to new treatments for people living with autoimmune conditions.
The research, which was co-funded by JDRF, reveals that drugs that target the immune system offer very effective and rapid improvements in stabilising blood sugar levels, often within just three months.
Results from a clinical trial called the PROTECT study show that teplizumab can preserve beta cell function in children and adolescents newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
Children in Northern Ireland are now eligible for a trial screening programme that will identify those at high risk of developing type 1 diabetes in the future.
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