This article is the first in a new staff-written series highlighting the extraordinary type 1 diabetes research happening right here in our Mid-America backyard. Thanks to the generosity of donors, volunteers, and partners across our region, more than $6.4 million is currently allocated to T1D research at leading institutions, including Washington University School of Medicine, University of Kansas Medical Center, Children’s Mercy Hospital, Missouri University of Science and Technology, and the University of Iowa.
In this series, our staff will introduce you to the researchers, labs, and ideas shaping the future of T1D care and cures—many of them just miles from home. We begin with a personal reflection from Luke, whose lived experience with T1D and firsthand exposure to local research bring this work to life.
Staff Feature by Luke Hoffman
It is a universal human trait to crave immediate gratification. We often struggle to patiently wait for the things we want most – and I freely admit I’m particularly guilty of this. When we want a change so deeply, it can be hard to see the slow movement toward that goal. Whether it’s the weight we lose over months, the improvement in our musical skills over endless rehearsal, or the real-world changes that result from our charitable donations, change often doesn’t come fast enough.
As a young adult who has lived with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) for the better part of a decade, I am intimately familiar with the feeling of urgency for change, both individual and collective, that defines my generation. I have graduated high school, then college, been thrust through global turbulence no one could have anticipated, and made career and personal choices that have changed my life. Through it all has been T1D.
When I was diagnosed in the Children’s Mercy Hospital emergency room, I was told many things about T1D and how it would affect my life. It was a shift at the speed we all wish we could see our goals met, only this time it wasn’t a shift I had imagined.
Since 2017, I have witnessed massive changes in technology and research. I have experienced improvements in quality of life and hope for cures thanks to the people and teams that Breakthrough T1D funds. One of these Cures research efforts is led by Dr. Hubert Tse at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC). His lab is investigating a dual approach to preserving critical islet cells that allow the pancreas to produce insulin independently. Dr. Tse’s team is pioneering a combination approach of using physical encapsulation to protect transplanted T-cells and the targeting of immune responses that seek to reject them.
I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Tse and tour his lab at KUMC – this was over a year ago. I remember being enthralled by his team’s work… and as someone who had to Google every
other word, that was no simple feat. I also remember the feeling of wanting to simply will such a Breakthrough into existence. It was a new feeling for me.
So it seems that the things we want most often take the longest to arrive, while the changes we never asked for come all at once. That has been true in my own life with T1D, and it is true in research. Progress is slow, incremental, and often invisible—until suddenly, it isn’t.
I take comfort in knowing that there are people dedicating their lives to changing what my future with T1D might look like. But I take even greater comfort in knowing that some of that work is happening right here, in my own community. Perhaps it’s the proximity, or the chance to meet researchers like Dr. Tse. But when our community invests in research close to home, the idea of a Breakthrough no longer feels abstract.
It feels possible.
Interested in writing a feature about your experience with T1D? Email Luke Hoffman at lukewhoffman014@gmail.com