Our research is improving lives by developing new ways to treat type 1 diabetes, until we find a cure.
That means helping people achieve better glucose control, with less effort. It also means looking for ways to prevent or cure the complications that life with type 1 may bring.
Artificial pancreas
Technologies to deliver insulin automatically when it is needed
Technologies to treat type 1 diabetes have already come a long way – there are now pumps that can deliver insulin automatically, and sensors that can give a minute-to-minute account of how glucose levels are changing in the body.
But as yet these devices cannot take the place of the person with type 1 who must decide on the right thing to do for themselves. So we have been pioneering the development of artificial pancreas systems that can automatically deliver the right dose of insulin at the right time.
Artificial pancreas systems consist of a glucose sensor, an insulin pump and a clever computer program that can use information from the sensor to tell the insulin pump how much insulin it should give.
Find out more about our artificial pancreas research.
Complications
New ways to prevent, detect and treat the complications that living with type 1 can bring
The spectre of serious long term complications of type 1 – eye disease, kidney disease, nerve damage, heart disease and strokes – can feel like it is hanging over people with type 1 and their families. The great news is that as more people with type 1 are able to achieve better glucose control, fewer people with type 1 are developing complications, and those that do are developing them later in life.
But that isn’t good enough. We want to remove the spectre entirely. We want to be able to detect complications as soon as they start to develop so that they can be treated quickly and efficiently with treatments developed specifically to work for people with diabetes. Better still, we want to be able to find out who is at most risk of developing complications, and protect them from getting them at all.
