Dr Matthew Lacorcia

Type 1 diabetes develops when the immune system’s T cells gradually destroy the cells that make insulin. As a result, people with T1D require constant monitoring and frequent insulin injections to control their blood sugar levels.

Our long-term goal is to develop a type of vaccine that can stop the immune system destroying the insulin producing cells. However, to do this we need a test that can determine whose immune systems are starting to attack their insulin producing cells.

We also need a blood test that can tell doctors and scientist if new therapies, intended to stop this autoimmune response, are working without having to wait for years to see who develops type 1 diabetes.

The goal of this project is to develop, optimise and validate a new blood test than can measure the strength of the autoimmune response against the insulin producing cells.

Dr Matt Lacorcia is an immunologist. He did his PhD at the Technical University of Munich in Germany, and also holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne.

Matt is using his skills to help develop a test that can measure the immune responses that indicate progression of type 1 diabetes using a small sample of blood from an affected individual.

While we understand how bone is built, we do not understand how cells regulate bone material composition throughout life to maintain flexibility and toughness and therefore, bone strength.

Weak bones are more prone to break than strong bones which can lead to increasing complications as we age.

While we understand how bone is built, we do not understand how cells regulate bone material composition throughout life to maintain flexibility and toughness and therefore, bone strength.

Bone mass and bone material quality both contribute to bone health but current treatments to improve bone strength are focused only on bone mass: they aim to increase mass by stimulating bone formation or by maintaining bone mass through the inhibition of bone loss. This project seeks to identify novel pathways which could improve bone quality in order to keep bone material strong and healthy.

Our ultimate goal is to understand how bone strength can be improved without needing to form new bone which may also be useful for other bone diseases.

Dr Martha Blank’s research focuses on understanding the factors that help maintain bone strength.

Martha carried out her undergraduate studies at the University of Applied Sciences in Vienna, Austria, before completing her PhD at SVI in 2022. She is expert in techniques that are used to analyse the composition of bone and is applying these to better understand how bone cells regulate collagen and mineral in bone tissue and how this influences bone strength.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition in which the insulin-producing cells are targeted and destroyed by cells of the immune system in the pancreas. Since insulin was discovered 100 years ago, there have been no real changes to treatment of type 1 diabetes.

Chris’ lab is investigating how a drug called baricitinib works to slow and even stop the progression of type 1 diabetes by protecting the insulin protecting cells from being attacked by the body’s immune system.

“We know that baricitinib can slow the progression of type 1 diabetes but what we are now looking at is how it does that. Understanding this can help pave the way for eventually finding a cure for type 1 diabetes.”

Dr Chris Chiu is a bioinformatician with both wet- and dry lab expertise.

He joined SVI in 2023, following a postdoc at the Peter Doherty Institute and completing his PhD at WEHI. He is applying his skills to understand the effect of the drug baricitinib in people with recently diagnosed type 1 diabetes who were enrolled in SVI’s BANDIT clinical trial.