Reprogramming the immune system to prevent type 1 diabetes

Pere Santamaria

Fundació de Recerca Clínic Barcelona - Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Barcelona, Spain

Autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes occur when the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s own tissues. Current treatments often suppress the immune system broadly, leaving patients vulnerable to infections and cancer. A new approach, developed by researchers at IDIBAPS, offers a more precise solution. It uses tiny particles—nanomedicines—that retrain harmful immune cells to become protective ones, without affecting the rest of the immune system.

This project focuses on understanding how these nanomedicines work at the genetic level. The treatment prompts a specific type of immune cell to transform into another type that calms the immune response and prevents damage. Researchers have already shown that this transformation happens in stages and involves changes in how genes are turned on or off. However, the exact switches that control this process are still unknown.

To uncover these mechanisms, the team will study how certain genes and proteins behave during the transformation. They will use advanced techniques to track changes in gene activity and DNA structure in individual cells. They will also test how removing specific genes affects the immune cells’ ability to become protective and prevent diabetes in mice.

The team includes experts in immunology, nanotechnology, and genetic analysis, and their findings could help identify markers to track the treatment’s effects in future clinical trials and improve its design.

Transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of an anti-diabetogenic immunoregulatory cell pathway

€500.000,00