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Home > News & events > News > Tegoprubart: behind the headlines
The stories stem from very early results of a clinical trial in the United States, where the drug is being tested alongside islet cell transplantation – a procedure in which insulin-producing cells from a donor pancreas are transplanted into someone with T1D. But what exactly does the research show, and how close is it to changing treatment for people with the condition?
Here’s what the evidence says:
It is designed to ‘dampen’ the immune system. Researchers hope this could help prevent the body from attacking transplanted organs or cells, such as insulin-producing beta cells.
Because it targets a specific immune pathway rather than broadly suppressing the immune system, researchers think it may eventually offer a more precise way to prevent transplant rejection without the side effects that people currently experience when using anti-rejection drugs, also known as immunosuppressive drugs. However, the drug is still being tested in clinical trials and is not yet approved for routine use.
The University of Chicago is running an initial phase 1/2 trial testing the drug tegoprubart in people with T1D who receive transplanted insulin-producing cells (islets) from a donor. The trial is funded through Breakthrough T1D with additional support from the Cure Alliance.
In the trial, participants receive:
The goal is to see whether this targeted immunosuppressive drug can protect the transplanted cells without the unwanted side effects of standard anti-rejection drugs.
Early results suggest that the drug may help prevent the immune system from attacking these transplanted cells, allowing them to survive and continue producing insulin.
Six participants have been making their own insulin and have not needed to take additional insulin following their islet transplant and receiving tegorupart. The first three people treated have now been free of the need to take insulin for over a year.
In itself, tegoprubart is not a cure for T1D. Instead, it is an experimental drug that may help protect transplanted insulin-producing cells from immune attack, potentially making cell-replacement therapies more effective.
This research is especially important as we enter a new era of cell-based therapies for T1D. Transplanting insulin-producing cells offers the potential to restore the body’s natural ability to regulate blood sugar, which could dramatically reduce or even eliminate the need for insulin injections. But a major challenge has been protecting these transplanted cells from the immune system without causing harmful side effects.
Drugs like tegoprubart represent a promising step toward making safe, effective, and widely accessible cell therapies a reality for people living with T1D.
For now, the research does not change how T1D is treated. People with the condition still need insulin therapy and regular monitoring of blood glucose levels.
The treatment studied is currently available only in research settings.
If further studies show that the treatment is safe and effective, it would need to go through regulatory approval before being widely used. In the UK this would involve approval by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and assessment by NICE to decide whether it should be funded by the NHS.
Researchers will need to carry out larger and longer clinical trials to confirm whether tegoprubart is safe and effective. These studies will look at how well transplanted insulin-producing cells survive over time and whether tegoprubart can support the long-term survival of the transplanted cells and production of insulin.
Breakthrough T1D is also funding an additional study to explore how tegoprubart works in islet transplants for people who have both type 1 diabetes and chronic kidney disease.
The T1D Fund, A Breakthrough T1D Venture has invested in Eledon Pharmaceuticals, the company developing tegoprubart.
The trial at the University of Chicago is funded through Breakthrough T1D with additional support form the Cure Alliance.
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