Potential Type 1 diabetes treatment may stem from outsmarting immune cells

Type 1 diabetes — one of the most common chronic diseases in children — destroys insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, requiring lifelong daily management. The autoimmune disease affects up to 10% of people with diabetes worldwide. 

Cory Berkland, the Mark and Becky Levin Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering and professor of chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis, will lead a team to develop a potential new treatment for Type 1 diabetes (T1D) with a two-year, $2.6 million grant from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.

To try to delay the onset of the disease and prevent its progression to insulin dependence, Berkland plans to use proinsulin, which is typically processed by the body to produce insulin and is one of the proteins the immune system attacks in T1D. 

“Similar to the effects of allergy shots, we want to develop an antigen-specific immunotherapy with proinsulin to see if we can induce tolerance and mitigate the effects of various immune cells that are causing the disease,” Berkland said.  

“Proinsulin is a longer string of amino acids with limited effect on glucose, and immune cells may recognize it and mount an unwanted autoimmune response,” Berkland said. “We deliver it in a way that causes immune cells recognizing proinsulin to sleep or become regulated instead of activated.”

For this research, Berkland will collaborate with Peggy Kendall, MD, chief of the Division of Allergy and Immunology at WashU School of Medicine; Remi Creusot, associate professor of medical sciences (in medicine) at Columbia University; and Rachel Bonami, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology at Vanderbilt University.

Berkland’s team has been working on potential treatments for T1D for a decade and has previously shown success with auto-antigen-specific immunotherapy for several diseases in preclinical studies.

“We need to put all the pieces of the puzzle together to regulate the autoimmune response,” Berkland said. “Another exciting aspect of the project is that we are initiating the rigorous Investigational New Drug studies required prior to human safety testing.”

Berkland’s lab studies pharmaceuticals and biomaterials emphasizing molecular design, drug formulation and transport in the human body. He is a co-founder of Orbis Biosciences (acquired by Adare Pharmaceuticals), publicly traded Savara Pharmaceuticals, Bond Biosciences, and several other startups. Berkland is chief scientific officer of Bond Biosciences and is an executive and chairman of the board for Kinimmune and Axioforce.

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