Live Chat: Targeting Type 1 Diabetes

Curing or preventing complex diseases is one of the most ambitious medical goals out there. Since the late 1990s, researchers have been trying—and mostly failing—to accomplish this in type 1 diabetes, an immune disease that destroys cells in the pancreas that make insulin and that mostly strikes children. This summer, a slew of new studies reported results on efforts to shift the balance of cells in the immune system in hopes of keeping disease at bay. The results show just how tough it is to intervene successfully. Why is it so difficult to get from a scientific discovery to a new drug? Is preventing disease harder or easier than treating patients who already have it? What does the road ahead look like?