Our research projects

Sometimes insulin can cause cells to multiply rather than bringing down blood sugar levels. This can increase the risk of some cancers in people with diabetes. Prof Nia Bryant wants to better understand how and why insulin can have this effect. With her PhD student, she will pinpoint the specific areas on cells that causes insulin to lower blood sugars and not to tell cells to multiply. In the future, this could help scientists develop new treatments for people with diabetes that aren’t linked with an increased risk of cancer.

People with diabetes have a higher risk of getting more severe symptoms from common respiratory viruses, such as the common cold and flu, than people without diabetes. But we don’t yet understand why the immune systems of people with diabetes are less efficient at dealing with respiratory viruses, and why high blood sugars are linked to increased chance of severe symptoms. Dr Dominguez-Villar’s PhD student will work out how type 1 diabetes changes the way in which immune cells detect and fight respiratory infections.  

Losing weight and going into remission can be a huge challenge for people living with type 2 diabetes, and isn’t possible for everyone. Dr William Scott wants to figure out exactly what goes on in fat tissue during weight loss, and how and why this can help people go into remission. A deeper understanding of this could help scientists to develop first-of-a-kind treatments for type 2 diabetes that aim to directly trigger remission.

Insulin-making beta cells have recycling centres, called lysosomes, which help to break down waste inside our cells. When someone has type 2 diabetes, this process stops working properly. Dr Aida Martinez-Sanchez wants to investigate why this happens by studying the role a protein called M6PR, plays in controlling how lysosomes in beta cells behave. Understanding this could help researchers to develop better treatments for type 2 diabetes and improve those already available. 

Diabetes kidney disease mostly affects older people with type 2 diabetes. It can progress over time until the kidneys stop working and can result in further serious complications, like heart attack or stroke. Professor Dasgupta’s team will find out whether a prompt, which appears on computer screens, could improve how doctors give advice to older people with type 2 and kidney disease. And if this better guidance could help to slow kidney damage, helping people live healthier, happier lives. 

High blood sugar levels can damage blood vessels, and over time this can lead to diabetes complications. Professor David Long will enhance a pioneering new way of growing blood vessels in the lab to study how they behave in diabetes. Understanding what happens to blood vessels in high sugar levels could help researchers to develop new treatments that prevent or slow all sorts of complications. 

Proteins are key to keeping insulin-making beta cells healthy. But in type 2 diabetes, something goes wrong with the process where beta cells make new proteins. Dr Daniela Nasteska will study this in detail to understand what goes wrong and how this leads to type 2 diabetes. This could pave the way to new treatments for type 2 diabetes and unlock better ways to grow beta cells in the lab, ready for transplant. 

People with type 2 diabetes have a higher risk of depression. And people with depression have a higher risk of type 2. But there’s lots we don’t understand about how exactly the two conditions are connected. Dr Tyrrell wants to unravel more about the complicated relationship between the conditions and the impact of living with both type 2 and depression on health. This could lead to better ways to treat people with both conditions.

Type 1 diabetes develops when the immune system attacks and destroys insulin-making beta cells. Dr Matthew Johnson and his team will study a rare type of diabetes that could help us better understand why the immune system turns on beta cells, and how this process may differ between people. This could pave the way towards new treatments that protect the pancreas from harm in people with or at risk of type 1 diabetes.

Tiny variations in our genes can affect insulin receptors, which sit on the surface of our cells and allow insulin to enter. Problems with insulin receptors affect how our body responds to insulin and can cause severe insulin resistance. Professor Semple and his student want to find out how thousands of different genetic variations affect how the insulin receptor works, and which variations contribute to insulin resistance. They hope this will make it easier to diagnose people with rare types of diabetes and help them learn more about how insulin works in all types of diabetes, paving the way to new insulins or ways of making insulin work better.