The American Diabetes Association (ADA) announced collaboration with Entelos Inc, to initiate a cutting-edge research programme aimed at preventing type 1 diabetes at the ADA's 64th Scientific Sessions.

The ADA and Entelos will develop a silico research platform based on a non-obese diabetic (NOD) mouse, the primary animal model used by researchers to study type 1 diabetes. The platform will initially be used by Entelos and certain academic research laboratories to address key scientific questions related to the onset and progression of this disease.

The first academic centers to receive the technology will be those led by members of the ADA's type 1 diabetes Scientific Advisory Board, which has been formed to provide scientific guidance and oversight to the collaboration. Over time, the platform will also be made available to other academic researchers through the ADA's process. It is anticipated that the improved scientific understanding gained through this effort will lead to therapies for the prevention of human type 1 diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes is an auto-immune disease that affects approximately one million people, most of them children, in the US alone. The disease arises from the autoimmune destruction of islet beta cells in the pancreas, leading to the failure to produce insulin, which causes a loss of glucose control.

Dr. Mikhail Gishizky, chief scientific officer for Entelos, said, "Although numerous therapies have been shown to inhibit the development of type 1 diabetes in the NOD mouse, success in advancing these therapies to human patients has been limited. Through the use of predictive mathematical models, the research community will have a significant scientific advancement which will ultimately improve the rationale for taking novel interventions into humans."

Entelos is a biotech company involved in silico (in computer) research and the use of computer models to advance pharmaceutical research and development.