Skip to main content

Renuka Dias

Aug 18, 2026

7:35
Renuka, can I start with you? Can you just tell me how big a difference this drug is making to patients' lives?
7:40
So since sort of 1921, we haven't really had anything apart from insulin for people living with type 1 diabetes, but this drug, the drug called teplizumab, I think is a step change in diabetes care, in fact.
7:54
So we move from being reactive, where we are trying to treat someone's symptoms when they've already got high blood sugars, to proactive state, where we identify individuals who don't have any symptoms, but who are at very high risk of going to need insulin at some point, and trying to effectively change that disease trajectory, both by the delay, but potentially also by changing how the disease manifests in the future, although we don't know how that would work.
10:01
So when in that moment do you decide you're suitable for the drug?
10:05
So in the UK, teplizumab can be given to individuals who are at a specific stage in their journey of type 1 diabetes, and that stage is called stage two.
10:14
And if I just take a few seconds to describe what that means is that when you are at high risk of going onto insulin, you develop, uh, markers in your blood called antibodies or autoantibodies.
10:26
So those tell us that the cells in the pancreas, the insulin-producing cells, are, are already being attacked.
10:32
Stage one is where you've got those markers, but you have normal blood sugars.
32:52
If you can explain the difference between its stages and why delaying progression is so much important.
33:00
Well, thank you.
33:00
So just to sort of give a background, type one diabetes is what we call an autoimmune condition.
33:06
So that means that the normal immune system that helps us fight things like infections decides to attack our own cells.
33:13
So in type 1 diabetes, the cells that come under attack are those cells that produce a hormone called insulin, which helps keep our blood sugars in the normal range.
33:21
And for decades and decades and decades, hundreds of years, we diagnosed type 1 diabetes at the point that the blood sugar went too high.
33:28
So that's called hyperglycemia.

6 MINS LATER

39:54
But if you can tell us that, how should we measure its success? And do people need to worry about any sort of side effects as well?

We value your privacy

We use cookies to understand how you use our platform and to improve your experience. Click “Accept All” to consent, or “Decline non-essential” to opt out of non-essential cookies. Read our Privacy Policy.