Our research projects

Professor Sattar will look at both the direct and indirect effects of the coronavirus pandemic for people with diabetes. He’ll find out if it has had an impact on risk factors for diabetes complications, and if there’s differences between different groups of people with diabetes. He’ll also explore the effects of having coronavirus on blood sugar levels. These insights could help us understand what needs to be done to minimise any negative consequences of the pandemic, to keep people with diabetes healthy for longer.  

The bacteria living in our gut play an important role in our health, and could have a hand in the development of type 2 diabetes. Professor Dumas will study the gut bacteria of people who are at high risk of type 2 diabetes to discover which species of bacteria could be involved in either increase or reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. This could help scientists to develop new treatments that change the makeup of our gut bacteria and help to prevent type 2 diabetes.

Proteins, called GPCRs, play a role in controlling appetite and blood sugar levels. Dr Thompson wants to understand how the development of obesity and type 2 diabetes changes GPCR chemistry in the brain. Knowing this could help scientists to develop treatments that act on GPCRs to treat obesity and type 2 diabetes, giving people living with or at risk of these conditions new, urgently needed treatment options.

Islet cell transplants for people with type 1 diabetes and severe hypos can be life-changing. But a lot of islet cells die soon after transplant, limiting the success of the treatment. Dr Caton plans to block a protein called NAMPT to see if this can improve the survival of cells after transplant. In the future, this can make islet transplants more effective and more accessible.  

The pancreas-liver-gut axis are a group of organs that work together to control blood sugar levels. Changes in blood flow in these organs have been found in type 2 diabetes. Professor Murphy plans to understand these blood flow changes better and see if they hold the answer to improving current type 2 diabetes treatments or finding new ones. 

People with diabetes can develop nerve pain. But right now there are no good painkillers to treat it. Dr Hulse will study nerves in the spinal cord to find out what causes this pain in diabetes. This could help us find better treatments to help people with diabetes to reduce their pain and make a huge difference to their quality of life. 

People with diabetes can develop problems with their feet, called neuropathy. Some people experience chronic pain alongside this, but we don’t yet know why. Professor David Bennet will use machine learning to identify risk factors for painful neuropathy and develop a ‘calculator’ that could help to spot people at risk. This research could help to develop new treatments and allow doctors to better support those at greatest risk.

Scientists can grow new insulin-producing beta cells in the lab, but they don’t work as well as ‘real’ beta cells. Dr Ildem Akerman will test out a new way to improve how we make lab-grown beta cells, she hopes this will make them work better and be more responsive to changes in blood sugar. In the future, we hope lab-grown beta cells could be transplanted into people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes to replace the cells that have been destroyed or stopped working, and this project could help us take a huge step towards that goal.

It’s possible to identify people who are very likely to develop type 1 diabetes by looking for signs in the blood that indicate the immune system has started to plan an attack on the pancreas. Professor Parth Narendran is exploring how a programme to test children for these signs and find out their risk of type 1 diabetes would best work in the UK.

The ELSA study will screen 20,000 children using a simple blood test. Screening can help to make sure children have the earliest, safest diagnosis possible. And children found to be at risk could be eligible for trials of promising new treatments. ELSA will give us vital insights that could help lead to a routine, widespread type 1 diabetes screening programme in the UK.