Cambridge Institute for Medical Research

Professor John Todd

Home | Research Profile | Key Publications

Type 1 Diabetes Genetics and Mechanisms

Our aim is to further characterise the molecular basis for the autoimmune inflammatory disease type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes.  We use an integrated combination of genetics, in large collections of type 1 diabetic families and case/control, statistics, genome informatics and data mining, and gene expression and functional studies.  Our major effort now is to correlate susceptibility genotypes with biomarkers and phenotypes e.g. we have correlated cellular levels of the interleukin-2 receptor with the genotypes of the IL-2RA gene that are associated with type 1 diabetes susceptibility.  This is a first step towards identifying disease precursors that could be used in the evaluation of future therapeutic studies.  To achieve this we have helped build a local biobank of healthy volunteers in whom we can study the effects of disease-associated genotypes (The Cambridge BioResource: www.cambridgebioresource.org.uk/), funded by the National Institute for Health Research Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.  Our research efforts are part of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation/Wellcome Trust Diabetes and Inflammation Laboratory (DIL), which includes the laboratories of Linda Wicker and David Clayton, as well as collaborations with the Department of Haematology (Willem Ouwehand), the Department of Paediatrics (David Dunger), and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

Funding

• European Commission
• Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
• Medical Research Council
• National Institutes of Health (USA)
• National Institute for Health Research Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre
• The Wellcome Trust

Group Members