Safeguarding the delivery of pancreatic islets for the treatment of diabetes

DRIVE aims to improve pancreatic islet transplant therapy for diabetes mellitus, a chronic disease characterised by high blood sugar due to a shortage of insulin. Transplant of insulin-producing pancreatic islets purified from donor pancreases can restore tight natural control of blood sugar and eliminate the need for multiple daily injections of insulin, thereby improving patient’s quality of life.

However, despite its proven effectiveness among current treatments for type 1 diabetes, this therapy suffers from poor survival and engraftment of transplanted islets and risks associated with the lifelong immune suppression medication that islet transplant recipients must take.

These factors limit the use of this therapy to a small percentage of “brittle” type 1 diabetes patients for whom daily insulin injections are not sufficient to control their diabetes.

The DRIVE project aims to develop technologies to dramatically improve the survival and engraftment rate of transplanted islets and forego the need for lifelong immune suppression. DRIVE’s vision is to widen the application of islet transplant therapy to more insulin-dependent diabetes patients (T1D and T2D).

DRIVE is a 4-year project to be carried out by 14 European partners, coordinated by the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG).

DRIVE project at TERMIS-EU 2019

TERMIS-EU 2019 symposium will focus on the most recent developments on novel biomaterial designs and encapsulation methods to enable islets or islet-like cells immunoisolation, and to improve their survival and function after transplantation. DRIVE will be there jointly with BIOCAPAN and ELASTISLET, two research projects funded under the same Horizon 2020 call.

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Early Stage Researchers positions

A call for 6 PhD positions with three-year funding is open in the recently granted Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (MSCA-ITN) project DELIVER of advanced therapies for diabetes training network.

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DRIVE General Assembly

The DRIVE project held it's penultimate General Assembly meeting from January 17-18th 2019 at one of the well-known Universities in Europe, the University of Oxford. The main focus of the meeting was sharing all the projects' progress, and to organize the efforts for the 4 months ahead.

DRIVE’S SISTER PROJECT

DELIVER is a European Industrial Doctorate programme coordinated by NUI Galway working to break insulin-dependency in juvenile diabetic patients.

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