Cures
Curing type 1 diabetes is our north star.
We envision a world where the burden of T1D no longer exists.
It’s a world where people don’t have to manage their diabetes—don’t take insulin, don’t have blood-sugar highs and lows, and don’t develop complications. That’s how we define cures for T1D, and it requires continual advancement on three fronts: early detection, disease-modifying therapies, and cell therapies.
Early detection
Initiatives that identify and support people at risk for T1D before disease onset
A simple blood test can detect T1D autoantibodies, an established marker of risk of developing T1D. Ensuring more people have access to it can have a transformative effect on the landscape of T1D research and save lives simultaneously.
Breakthrough T1D has prioritized the development and execution of a global universal early detection strategy to identify high-risk individuals, reduce diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA)—a serious complication due to a shortage of insulin—at diagnosis, accelerate the evaluation of disease-modifying therapies, and provide treatment options to people at risk.
Disease-modifying therapies
Therapies that prevent, slow, halt, or reverse T1D progression
From stopping the immune attack to regrowing beta cells in the body, Breakthrough T1D’s disease-modifying therapies portfolio is a crucial component of our efforts to drive cures for T1D.
T1D is a progression. Some people have immune systems that have begun attacking the insulin-producing beta cells but are not symptomatic yet. Some people have had T1D for decades and have lost nearly all insulin production. Disease-modifying therapies are aimed at helping everyone with T1D—regardless of where they are on the disease continuum.
Cell therapies
Therapies that replace beta cells so that people with T1D can again produce their own insulin
Thanks to recent advances in cell therapies, people with T1D could be freed from their blood-sugar monitors and insulin injections for years, or even decades, and reap additional outcomes of improved glucose control and other long-term benefits.
The Cell Therapies Program invests in research and clinical trials to develop and deliver life-changing therapies that place healthy, insulin-producing beta cells back into the bodies of people with T1D.
Explore our research
From the first synthetic insulin to improved T1D management technologies, our research is changing lives for the better.
