Our resource hub is home to a wealth of articles, stories and videos about managing and living with type 1 diabetes.
Place your order for our free information packs that support adults and children who have been recently diagnosed.
Our researchers are working on different ways to develop a cure for type 1 diabetes - from growing insulin-producing beta cells in labs to hacking the immune system.
Learn about the technologies that can deliver insulin automatically when needed. And discover the next generation of insulins that are currently being developed.
You could win a cash prize of up to £25,000 when you play the Breakthrough T1D lottery. As well as the chance to win great prizes, you’ll also help fund our research to find a cure for type 1 diabetes.
Researchers need your help. By taking part in research studies and clinical trials, you will help them make progress to improve lives and find a cure for type 1 diabetes.
Our ambitious new roadmap is aimed at driving significant advancements in type 1 diabetes research, treatment, and care.
Your donation helps support people living with type 1 diabetes and funds the best treatment and cure research.
We provide a wealth of information and free resources to help you support and empower your patients or students.
Take our free course for schools to learn more about supporting pupils with type 1 diabetes in educational settings.
Home > About Breakthrough T1D UK & our impact > Our research > Our research partnerships > Connect Immune Research
Connect Immune Research is a partnership that wants to understand how immune conditions are linked.
We want the scientific community to work together across autoimmunity specialisms to tackle multiple conditions at once. Understanding similarities and using existing knowledge of different conditions could help transform lives much faster than small groups of specialists working on separate conditions.
Our governance group members are responsible for setting the long-term agenda, tone and principles behind the Connect Immune Research partnership. In addition to our role in the governance group, Breakthrough T1D holds secretariat duties.
Vision/Aim: A future free from arthritis
Mission: We won’t rest until everyone with arthritis has access to the treatments and support they need to live the life they choose with real hope of a cure in the future. To deliver our mission we invest in world-class research, deliver high-quality services and campaign on the issues that matter most to people with arthritis.
Autoimmune Link: Rheumatoid arthritis, Psoriatic arthritis, Juvenile idiopathic arthritis, and Axial spondyloarthritis. Along with rarer autoimmune muscular skeletal conditions including Lupus, Antiphospholipid syndrome, Scleroderma, Sjogren’s syndrome, Myositis, Vasculitis, Bechet’s syndrome.
Policy/Campaign Focus: Ensure arthritis is a priority in national health plans; build greater public awareness of arthritis; bring down waiting times for people with arthritis; improve work-related support; strengthen care and support for CYP; improve access, options and care pathways.
Research Focus: Early detection, prevention and cure; targeted treatment; living well; people and partnerships
Visit the Arthritis UK website to find out more.
Vision/Aim: To support people living with, and affected by, type 1 diabetes (T1D)
Mission: To improve lives by accelerating breakthroughs to treat, prevent and ultimately cure type 1 diabetes
Autoimmune Link: Type 1 diabetes
Policy/Campaign Focus: Enhance access to innovative treatments; support research funding; improve overall healthcare for all individuals with type 1 diabetes
Research Focus: Early detection; disease-modifying therapies; cell therapies; improving lives; growing the T1D research community
Visit the BSI website to find out more.
Vision/Aim: Our vision is a world free from MS. That means fewer people developing MS. And everyone with MS having the effective treatments and support they need to live well.
Autoimmune Link: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated neurological condition
Policy/Campaign Focus: Raising public awareness and creating a stronger voice to challenge inequalities. To advocate for treatments, care, support and financial security that people with MS deserve. And build a thriving and sustainable healthcare and neurology workforce.
Research Focus: Finding treatments to stop MS getting worse for everyone with MS. Improving quality of life through holistically managing the impact of MS. And driving towards the possibility of preventing MS in future generations.
Visit the MS Society website to find out more.
Our associate members are important stakeholders for the Connect Immune Research partnership. Their support helps to promote and drive partnership activities.
Vision/Aim: A world where people affected by alopecia live the life they want.
Mission: To provide support, community, and education to improve the lives of those affected by alopecia.
Autoimmune Link: Alopecia areata (and its subtypes) is an autoimmune condition; Primary scarring alopecias (including LPP, FFA, CCCA) are suspected autoimmune conditions.
Policy/Campaign Focus: Raise awareness of the challenges faced by those affected by alopecia, in both society and healthcare systems, and campaign for improved care.
Research Focus: Place those affected by alopecia at the heart of research and use research to inform our support model.
Visit the Alopecia UK website to find out more.
Vision/Aim: To fund life-changing research into bowel cancer and other bowel diseases.
Mission: Leading, early career, bowel research charity, and our research is saving and improving lives.
Autoimmune Link: Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), specifically Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
Policy/Campaign Focus: Raise awareness of bowel cancer and bowel diseases; reduce embarrassment around bowels and bowel diseases
Research Focus: Invest in next generation of scientists; fund innovative research that can relate to all aspects of bowel disease from bench to bedside.
Visit the Bowel Research UK website to find out more.
Vision/Aim: A world where the best possible treatment and care is accessible to all people with thyroid disorders.
Mission: We are dedicated to providing people with the highest standard of support and information about thyroid disorders based on the best current medical evidence and individual experiences.
Autoimmune Link: Autoimmune thyroid conditions such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Graves’ disease and thyroid eye disease.
Policy/Campaign Focus: to promote the relief and treatment of persons suffering from thyroid disorders and related conditions or diseases and to provide advice, information and support both for such persons, their families and the public generally.
Research Focus: to promote and support research, and to disseminate for the public benefit the results of any such research into the causes and possible cures (whether partial or complete) and the possible prevention of the said disorders and diseases.
Visit the British Thyroid Foundation website to find out more.
Visit the Coeliac UK website to find out more.
Visit the Crohn’s & Colitis UK website to find out more.
Visit the Inflammatory Neuropathies UK website to find out more.
Vision/Aim: A world where no child has to suffer from arthritis.
Mission: To achieve our vision through research, awareness, support and advocacy.
Autoimmune Link: Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA).
Policy/Campaign Focus: Raise awareness amongst the public and health care professionals that children and young people get arthritis; providing support to children with JIA and their families; advocating for the best treatment and care.
Research Focus: Understand the causes, the effects and the impacts of the condition, and work towards finding a cure. Juvenile Arthritis Research also support other high-quality research into JIA and manage the JIA VIP Research Panel.
Visit the JAR website to find out more.
Visit the myaware website to find out more.
Vision/Aim: A future with timely diagnosis and holistic care, supported by a united axial spondyloarthritis (SpA) community.
Mission: Transforming axial SpA futures, creating a social movement for change and an empowered community.
Autoimmune Link: Axial SpA is an immune mediated inflammatory disease.
Policy/Campaign Focus: Putting people with axial SpA at the heart of what we do, and leading the debate about the future of axial SpA diagnosis, care and support.
Raising awareness and educating people about axial SpA through public awareness campaigns and healthcare professional education.
Supporting people to live well with their condition through specialist support and advice.
Research Focus: Generating evidence to demonstrate that improvements in time to diagnosis, care and self-management are possible through research, pilots and demonstration projects.
Visit the NASS website to find out more.
Vision/Aim: To see psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis managed in a positive way, more effectively
Mission: To put people with psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis at the centre of care, deserving of recognition and effective management
Autoimmune Link: Psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.
Policy/Campaign Focus: Educate and empower people affected by psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis and those who provide the support and medical care; educate the wider public
Research Focus: Relief of sickness and promotion of health; promote and protect the physical and mental health; causes, prevention and management
Visit the PAPAA website to find out more.
Vision/Aim: For everyone served by the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust to have access to world-leading healthcare, delivered by a thriving workforce and driven by medical research that has a global impact.
Mission: Support our hospitals, our NHS colleagues, our patients and our researchers.
From small acts of kindness to huge investments in discovery and innovation, everything we do changes lives for the better.
Our extraordinary volunteers enrich the experience of patients and the support they provide to NHS staff is transformational.
We’re there when patients need us, thanks to the services we provide. And the grants that we make help our hospitals to accelerate vital medical research and invest in innovations to help patients and staff.
All this is made possible by the generosity of our supporters who help our hospitals go further and faster than the NHS could do alone.
Autoimmune Link: Fund research into various conditions; Partnership with Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust (RFL) and the Institute of Immunity and Transplantation at UCL.
Policy/Campaign Focus: Our role is to support the RFL patients and wider population of North Central London enabling the NHS to achieve more than it can do alone. Providing the best outcomes for patients and funding projects and research that improve treatment, care and services.
Research Focus: Invest in innovative research that lays the foundations for life-changing and lifesaving research. We fund research across the research pipeline from laboratory research to clinical studies and infrastructure.
Visit the Royal Free Charity website to find out more.
Visit the Wren Project website to find out more.
Autoimmune conditions occur when a person’s immune system – which protects the body against infections and disease – goes wrong, and attacks healthy cells, tissues and organs. This can cause different autoimmune conditions depending on which parts of the body are affected.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition where the immune system attacks the beta cells in the pancreas. These cells produce insulin, a hormone essential for regulating blood sugar levels. When they are destroyed, insulin production stops, leading to type 1 diabetes.
Although different autoimmune conditions affect different parts of the body, we know that they are connected – understanding that connection may help with improving diagnosis and developing better, targeted therapies.
There are more than 80 different autoimmune conditions.
In the UK, an estimated one in ten people live with an autoimmune condition. That’s 10% of the population.
Roughly one quarter to one third of people living with one autoimmune condition live with more than one.
As the type 1 diabetes charity, our priority is to prevent type 1 diabetes from happening and find the cure for the 400,000 people living with it in the UK.
The Connect Immune Research partnership brings together charities who focus on autoimmune conditions; working together will help us find a cure of type 1 diabetes faster. It could also allow our partners to prevent and cure a whole range of other autoimmune conditions, which together affect approximately six million people in the UK.
Hear from experts by experience: Rebekah’s story: Living with type 1 diabetes, hypothyroidism and vitiligo
All open funding calls as part of the Connect Immune Research partnership are shared on our Research Opportunities Funded in Partnership pages.
charity partners since the partnership was established in 2018
research projects funded, including two lab exchange placements, with two projects receiving further external funding
researchers supported through Connect Immune research
First Project Award
In 2018, Connect Immune Research awarded funding for the first research project to Professor Yanick Crow at The University of Edinburgh. This project investigated the role of interferon – a substance produced by the immune system – in autoimmunity.
Chernajovsky Foundation collaboration
In 2022, we announced that ten new autoimmunity research projects would receive nearly £1 million from a partnership between the Lorna and Yuti Chernajovsky Biomedical Research Foundation and Connect Immune Research.
The ten pilot projects target the links between autoimmune conditions to increase our understanding and generate new treatments.
Spotlight on Professor Lucy Walker’s project: Stopping immune cells from launching an autoimmune attack.
The collaboration published a commentary on the need to approach research into immune-mediated inflammatory diseases by focusing on their shared immunological and molecular pathways. Read the article Immune-mediated inflammation across disease boundaries: breaking down research silos.
Are you #AutoimmuneAware report
In November 2018, Connect Immune Research launched the Are You #AutoimmuneAware report. The report revealed the increase in autoimmune conditions and highlighted the need for greater recognition and investment for autoimmunity as a distinct research area.
Find out more in the Are You #AutoimmuneAware report [PDF].
Under the Microscope proposal
In 2025 Connect Immune Research submitted a proposal to the Under the Microscope inquiry, held by the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. We wanted to use this as an opportunity to raise awareness of autoimmune conditions (including living with multiple autoimmune conditions) and highlighted the need for focus and research funding in this area.
Read the proposal [PDF]
As the initiative develops further and begins to deliver results, we are keen for other organisations with an interest in autoimmune research to join and get involved. To help inform potential partners, we have developed the Connect Immune Research Charter [PDF] which explains our vision, strategy and principles.
For further information, please contact connect@breakthrought1d.org.uk.
DIRA exists to promote, support and fund research related to the causes, prevention and cure of diabetes. Learn about our partnership with DIRA.
Find out about the research opportunities that we are funding with other organisations.
Will you help boost our research by donating?
