Could there be a future without diabetes?
There are few conditions that science has made such a fundamental impact on as Type 1 diabetes - the first use of insulin in the 1920s transformed it from a death sentence into something people can live with.
But even today, Type 1 diabetes typically involves a lifetime of daily injections and, on average, people with it die younger than the rest of the population. This is why we urgently need more research into the condition.
One of the most exciting areas of research is islet cell transplants. These involves taking the islet cells - the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin - from dead donors and putting them into people with Type 1 diabetes, whose own islet cells have stopped working.
Diabetes UK funded the UK's first 15 islet cell transplants. It is now available on the NHS and 34 people have benefited since 2005.
The treatment is very effective. However, there are still issues to solve. The transplanted cells only last for a few years; there is a very limited supply of cells; and it is difficult to stop the body rejecting them.
We are already funding research that will help to solve these issues. The results should make islet transplants more successful and available to more people in the next few years.
We are also funding research into the artificial pancreas, a combination of electronic devices that work together to monitor and adjust insulin levels, like the pancreas does in people without diabetes.
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