JDRF Research

Diabetes Vaccine to Start Human Trial

JDRF - Funded researchers in the United Kingdom are starting human trials of a vaccine they hope will halt the development of type 1 diabetes.
The trial is being directed by JDRF-funded researcher Mark Peakman, M.D., Ph.D, at King’s College, London, and Colin Dayan, M.D., Ph.D., at Bristol University, U.K. Tests of the vaccine, which was developed over the last 10 years, will start at Bristol in July.
“It is very exciting that we are now taking this forward into patients,” Dr. Peakman said. “But these trials take years to complete, so it may be five to ten years before we see real progress.”

The first stage of the trial will test the vaccine’s safety in long-standing type 1 patients. (These are people whose insulin-producing beta cells are already destroyed; researchers don’t want to risk having the drug cause unforeseen damage.) If the results are encouraging, researchers will study the vaccine’s effect on a larger group of new-onset patients, and, subsequently, in those at risk for the disease.

The hope is that giving the drug to people in the early stages of type 1 diabetes will train the immune system to tolerate islet cells rather than attack them. The vaccine includes peptides, or protein fragments, identical to proteins contained in the islet cells. The peptides stimulate the production of protective immune cells that overwhelm destructive immune cells that cause type 1 diabetes, keeping them in check. This strategy has proven effective in mice.

Dr. Peakman does not think recruitment for the trial will be a problem, and he anticipates all the subjects will be drawn from the U.K. The study is being funded through the Diabetes Vaccine Development Center in Melbourne, Australia, a joint venture between JDRF and Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHRMC).