Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment her Department has made of the potential benefits of funding immunotherapy research for people with early-stage type 1 diabetes.

The Department delivers research into the diagnosis, treatment, and management of type 1 diabetes through the research infrastructure of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), comprised of biomedical research centres (BRCs), clinical research facilities (CRFs), and its Research Delivery Network (RDN). Through this infrastructure:

• the NIHR RDN is supporting the delivery of the Early Surveillance for Autoimmune Diabetes study, which is assessing the feasibility and benefits of screening children and young people for type 1 diabetes;
• the NIHR Oxford BRC is leading research into a new home test for type 1 diabetes in children and young people, exploring whether at-home testing could be employed more routinely across the National Health Service;
• the NIHR is supporting a UK-wide Type 1 Diabetes Cell Therapy Clinical Trials Network, a £5 million programme designed to build a nationwide infrastructure across NIHR BRCs and CRFs to support cell-therapy trials, enabling people with type 1 diabetes to gain access to the latest cutting-edge treatments as early as possible; and
• the NIHR is also investing £2.9 million in partnership with Diabetes UK to support the development and evaluation of the ‘D-stress’ programme, in order to identify the most effective way to prevent and treat type 1 diabetes distress, helping to improve the management of the condition, and the quality of life for those living with it.

The NIHR continues to welcome high-quality applications for research into type 1 diabetes, which will be assessed against its normal criteria, and judged in open competition.