Diabetes Federation of Ireland and JDRF promoting type 1 diabetes research in Ireland and the UK

The Diabetes Ireland Research Alliance, a subsidiary charity of the Diabetes Federation of Ireland and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) have teamed up to promote and fund type 1 diabetes research in Ireland and support JDRF’s global research programme.

The Alliance primarily funds high-quality diabetes research projects and raises the necessary funds to support these projects. Together, we have agreed to focus on several key activities which collectively will help to raise the profile of type 1 diabetes in the Republic of Ireland, and on the crucial need for more funding to develop effective treatments, and to prevent and ultimately cure the condition.

Our shared aim is to develop Ireland’s contribution in the field of type 1 diabetes research. Central to the partnership, is a drive to build relationships with key scientists and researchers in Ireland as both bodies recognise that facilitating these relationships will ensure type 1 research in Ireland can move forward.
 
A joint fundraising initiative has been agreed, with the aim of raising €50,000 per annum. This fund will be split between an existing project (the D-GAP project) that JDRF funds in the UK and will also contribute to the Research Alliance’s pot of funding for new research in type 1 diabetes in the Republic of Ireland. The Alliance has recently put out a call to Irish researchers for a 2/3 year high quality innovative Type 1 diabetes research project which it plans to jointly fund in conjunction with the Health Research Board and the Medical Research Charities Group.

The Partnership has chosen to fund JDRF’s Diabetes-Genes Autoimmunity and Prevention (D-GAP) project, which aims to refine the current understanding of how genetic and immunological factors combine in the development of type 1 diabetes.

Past research conducted by JDRF funded scientists has already shown that the genetic profile of individuals can suggest a pre-disposition to developing type 1 diabetes. By examining how the genes implicated in type 1 diabetes risk influence the immune system, we hope to understand how particular genetic variations lead to the failure of the finely-tuned responses within the immune system, and ultimately type 1 diabetes.
 
The five-year research programme is a partnership between the leading universities Kings College London, University of Bristol and University of Cambridge and has been backed by JDRF supporters all around the UK.
 

Mark Peakman, Professor of Immunology at King’s College London, and member of JDRF’s Scientific Advisory Committee said of D-GAP, “The major scientific advances as I see them are unravelling components of the immune system and beginning to tease out how a number of the genes that predispose diabetes work. We have, if you like, three sides of a triangle – we have disease at the top, at the bottom on the left we have immunology and on the bottom on the right we have genes. Currently, we have a direct link between genes and the disease, and we have a direct link between immunology and the disease. But there is something missing - a link between the genes and the immune system.  If we could find this link, we would then understand why certain individuals are genetically programmed to develop an immune response that leads to type 1 diabetes. And that multi-layering of investigations linking genes and immunology and type 1 diabetes cannot be done by an immunologist, it cannot be done by a geneticist. It needs to be done by experts in both of these fields embedded within strong clinical research. This is what D-GAP does, it brings together enormous strengths in different fields, so that we come out with something that’s greater than the sum of its parts – and that’s the goal of any centre, to really synergise and get some of the big answers.”