The Rio Tinto Children’s Diabetes Centre; a JDRF Global Centre of Excellence announces $60,000 in new round of seed grants for researchers dedicated to type 1 diabetes.
Three researchers from across Australia have received up to $20,000 to advance their research projects in type 1 diabetes (T1D).
These grants are designed to encourage new research activities and develop new research projects and partnerships.
Congratulations goes to:
Dr Keely Bebbington, a Clinical Psychologist who leads the Mental Health and Wellbeing research at the Rio Tinto Children’s Diabetes Centre, Telethon Kids Institute, for her project Talking about type 1 diabetes: Understanding adolescents’ needs to have confident conversations.
"In this project, we aim to understand the concerns, experiences, and support needs of adolescents with T1D in disclosing their diabetes diagnosis and regimen to others,” Dr Bebbington said.
“To do this, we will interview adolescents with T1D so that we can thoroughly understand their lived experience. As we plan to use this research to build on a future research and intervention plan to help support improved health and better psychological wellbeing for young people living with diabetes, the outcomes of this project will enable us to develop guidance that is based on and respects their daily experiences of living with T1D.”.
Dr Mugdha Joglekar, a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Medicine, Western Sydney University for the project Multi-omics analysis to identify early markers of β-cell loss. Dr Joglekars research focus is islet-cell biology and predictive biomarkers of diabetes progression.
"With promising drug therapies becoming available for T1D, it is timely and crucial to identify individuals at high-risk of developing T1D,” Dr Joglekar said.
“Through the seed funding, my team aims to investigate and validate blood-based dynamic biomarkers that capture multiple dimensions of islet cell loss in islet transplant and recent onset T1D individuals.”
Dr Megan Penno, ENDIA project Manager and Researcher, the University of Adelaide, for her project Investigating the urinary proteome as a source of risk-associated biomarkers of early childhood islet autoimmunity.
The ENDIA (Environmental Determinants of Islet Autoimmunity) study is an observational study that has collected longitudinal samples from children who have an immediate relative with T1D. "We think there might be changes in the urine proteins of the children in ENDIA who have developed islet autoantibodies, the first sign of T1D, versus children who don’t have islet autoantibodies,” Dr Penno said.
“If we find that's true, we want to go back and look at urine samples that the ENDIA team have collected since the children were born to see if we can find the protein changes even earlier. This could help us find new signs that someone might develop T1D, long before they show any clinical symptoms.”
We look forward to sharing their research progress with you.
Dr Keely Bebbington, Dr Mugdha Joglekar and Dr Megan Penno
First published Wednesday 5 June 2024.