A conference has been held at the European Parliament on the theme “Diabetes: Europe rising to the research challenge”. This conference was organised by the EC DG Research and EASD –the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.

This conference gathered 250 stakeholders representing public health authorities, members of the European Parliament, researchers community, the European Commission, pharmaceutical industries and international research foundations which promote diabetes care, prevention and cure worldwide.

The challenge discussed during this conference was highlighted by Prof. Reinout van Schilfgaaarde, adviser to the Health Minister of The Netherlands, Mr Hans Hoogervorst, Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, speaking on behalf of the Dutch EU Presidency:

“The aim and challenge of the new program for European research on diabetes is to find effective methods for the further improvement of prevention and treatment of diabetes and its complications, and to explore new approaches leading to the cure of the disease.

The need of such research is emphasized by the rapidly increasing number of diabetics in Europe and the estimation than 5 percent of the world population will suffer from diabetes in the year 2005.

The research ambitions require a sensible balance between fundamental research on the one hand and applied or population based studies on the other.

With this in view, it stands to reason to suggest that one should try to understand the pathophysiologic mechanisms underlying the disease, since this is the only way to find approaches for prevention and treatment on a rational basis rather than by endless trial and errors.”

Fundamental research should aim both at the prevention and treatment of diabetes, so as to offer the motives, tools and perspectives for applied or clinical intervention studies and for, properly designed population based studies.

Pr Vincent G. Geenen, Director of the Liege University Centre of Immunology and coordinator of the Euro-Thymaide project commented the conference:

“When presenting the classical approaches which are usually followed to study the development of Type 1 Diabetes and their perspectives for future treatment, one often underestimate the immunological factors and their consequences on auto-immune ß-cell selective destruction. To understand the mechanisms responsible for the absence or breakdown of the immunological self-tolerance to islet ß cells is certainly the key for the knowledge of  Type 1 diabetes pathophysiology and the road for the design of a way to prevent and cure this chronic devastating and public health cost-consuming disease”.

The Euro-Thymaide project is the first European Research Integrated Project (IP) developing a very novel approach
by exploring the major biological functions of the thymus. The thymus is responsible for the generation of T lymphocytes, a type of white blood cells responsible for cellular immunity. It is in the thymus that T lymphocytes are made competent against external infections while they are rendered self-tolerant, i.e. they do not attack tissues of their host.

The thymus is an organ located just behind the breastbone. A great number of tissue-specific proteins are expressed in the thymus, so that many self-antigens are presented to T cells maturing in the thymus. If a maturing T cell binds to any of these antigens, it will be censored, or programmed to death, in a process called clonal deletion. T cells that survive the maturing process and leave the thymus will be tolerant to most of self-proteins. This is called central self-tolerance. In addition, the thymus is responsible for the generation of self-specific regulatory T cells that inactivate in periphery self-reactive T cells having escaped the thymus censorship

Twenty-three partners are collaborating in EURO-THYMAIDE consortium to understand the mechanisms of autoimmunity resulting from the impairment of thymus-dependent central self-tolerance.

We can expect that this unique cross-border research network which involves academic research groups, hospitals and SMEs from 12 Countries can rapidly lead to new insights into mechanisms of autoimmune diseases, and will concurrently provide an unique platform for innovative diagnostics and for disease-specific therapies. Type 1 diabetes is the first prototypic target of EURO-THYMAIDE project.

Reference: www.euro-thymaide.org

This project is supported by funding under the Sixth Research Framework Programme of the European Union. The University of Liege is the coordinator of the project.