Help Find a Cure for Type 1 Diabetes

Every day, approximately 80 people are diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Help researchers find a cure for the millions of people affected by Diabetes today!

Type 1 diabetes (juvenile diabetes) is an autoimmune disease that occurs when a person's pancreas makes little to no insulin. The disease develops when the body's immune system attacks and destroys the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, called beta cells. Without insulin, too much glucose stays in the blood. Over time, increased glucose in the blood can lead to serious problems with the heart, kidneys, nerves, and eyes.

Because the cause of the disease is still unknown, after more than 100 years, we still treat the symptoms of diabetes, rather than the disease itself. Scientists believe that a person's own immune system, directed by genetic and environmental factors, plays a major role in the development of the disease. Before we can develop new treatments and a cure for diabetes, laboratory research is needed to understand the mechanics and triggers of type 1 diabetes.

The Max McGee National Research Center for Juvenile Diabetes is using a genetic approach to try to better understand the step-by-step mechanisms that cause the destruction of the beta cells by studying the family members of people with type 1 diabetes. Blood collected from family members enrolled in the study is analyzed to measure immune responses associated with type 1 diabetes. Your donation will help continue research into the underlying processes that result in type 1 diabetes.

You can help. Just $8.00 will pay for the laboratory supplies needed to process one research volunteer's blood sample.

Update from the Field

February 2018

Donors like you have provided funding that helps facilitate ongoing research efforts. They collected and archived samples from 98 subjects in the first 8 months of 2017. These included Type 1 diabetics, family members, and unrelated healthy controls. Funds from Greater Good most recently helped cover costs of DNA extraction for some subjects.

March 2017

Donors like you have provided funding that helps facilitate ongoing research efforts. The Max McGee National Research Center for Juvenile Diabetes, together with Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, has a continued focus on the processes and factors contributing to the development of Type 1 Diabetes. Of equal interest are those subjects with high risk for T1D who manage to escape onset. The Max McGee National Research Center had published a new biomarker of pancreatic beta cell death; in mouse and rat diabetes models, as well as in human patients. This may lead to a new method of tracking diabetes development in at-risk patients. They have been able to process additional subjects for storage of plasma and immune cells. These materials are critical to ongoing research studies.