Autoimmune Life Blog

To understand what causes type 1 diabetes (T1D), imagine a spy novel. It starts with a hero, the T-cell, that roams your body like James Bond. The T-cell hunts down enemies — bacteria and viruses — and snuffs them out. Then something goes terribly wrong: The hero becomes a villain.

One goal is to find markers that identify why some people with the virus don’t have symptoms while others get fatally ill. The sickest patients tend to have multiple health issues, which makes it hard to pinpoint the factors related to COVID-19.

COVID-19 has put a therapy called hydroxychloroquine in the spotlight — and, at the same time, shrouded it in confusion.

With a newly awarded $4 million grant from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, BRI and SCRI will now focus on using their novel approach to generate an engineered T cell product that can be used in a future first-in-human clinical trial.

In the face of COVID-19, the Brooke family got used to things being canceled: school and work now happen at their home in Portland, Oregon. Twins Zoe and Andrew had to change their plans for their 10th birthday party.

Even before the governor closed the schools, I think we realized COVID-19 was going to be a really big deal. Still, for many of us, that was the day it hit home. The virus was going to alter the way we live, work, learn and connect with others - maybe for years to come.

In February, Dana VanBuecken, ARNP, was living her normal life as a clinical research nurse and mother of four who lives with type 1 diabetes (T1D).

When some people are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (T1D), the disease progresses so quickly that their pancreas stops making insulin within a year.  For others, the process is slower and this can make their T1D easier to manage.  But what if we could identify these fast progressors early, and ma

Matt Dufort, PhD, fights diabetes one data point at a time. Matt is a bioinformatician at Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI), where he’s been using his data wrangling and analysis skills to find ways to prevent pancreatic damage in people living with type 1 diabetes (T1D).

What is the difference between an individual whose pancreas will continue producing insulin for 50 years, versus someone whose body may suddenly stop generating it within the next 18 months? That is the question Cate Speake, PhD, spends her days trying to answer.