Omega-1, a novel immunomodulator with potential to prevent Type 1 diabetes?

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Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease which is increasing dramaticallyin incidence in the UK. The reasons behind this increase are unknown butone explanation is that a reduced exposure to infectious agents may beresponsible.We have previously shown using a mouse model of type 1diabetes that extracts of a parasite are able to inhibit development ofdiabetes in this mouse strain. It is not necessary to have a liveinfection to achieve diabetes prevention. Our studies furthermore showthat prevention is achieved by increasing regulation of the immuneresponse. We have preliminary data showing that a purified product of theparasite is able to induce a population of cells involved in immuneregulation. We propose to see whether this product can inhibit diabetes inour mice, whether it can also induce human regulatory cells and dissecthow a single molecule can do this. The importance of this work is that itmay lead to the development of a novel biomodulator that can be used toprevent diabetes onset in humans.