Monitoring T cells could prevent type 1 diabetes

Scripps Research scientists have shown that analyzing a certain type of immune cell in the blood can help identify people at risk of developing type 1 diabetes, a life-threatening autoimmune disease. The new approach, if validated in further studies, could be used to select suitable patients for treatment that stops the autoimmune process—making type 1 diabetes a preventable condition.

In the study, which appeared in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers isolated T cells (a type of immune cell) from mouse and human blood samples. By analyzing the T cells that can cause type 1 diabetes, they were able to distinguish the at-risk patients who had active autoimmunity from those who had no significant autoimmunity—with 100% accuracy in a small sample.

In the study, Teyton and his team constructed protein complexes to mimic the mix of immune proteins and insulin fragments that specialized T cells called CD4 T cells normally would recognize to initiate the autoimmune reaction. They used these constructs as bait to capture anti-insulin CD4 T cells in blood samples. They then analyzed the gene activity within the captured T cells, and expression of proteins on the cells, to gauge their state of activation.

In this way, they were able to develop a classification algorithm that correctly identified which at-risk patients, in a set of nine, had ongoing anti-islet autoimmunity.

Reference: Luc Teyton et al, Science Translational Medicine, DOI 10.1126/scitranslmed.ade3614