Breakthrough T1D announced the funding of an approximately $1 million collaboration with the University of Michigan’s Brehm Center and the Brehm Coalition to evaluate a new hypothesis on why beta cells lose their ability to produce insulin, resulting in a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes (T1D). In this proposed model of T1D, the loss of beta cell function may not be driven by beta cell death, as is widely believed, but rather by the regression of beta cells into a less mature state in which they are no longer able to produce insulin effectively, or at all. Proof of this model could open an entirely new therapeutic strategy, both to prevent T1D and to restore insulin production in individuals with the disease.

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