Ballad Research Institute

Ballad scientists have identified a new immune cell type in human blood. Children who are diagnosed with rapidly progressing type 1 diabetes have very few of these cells but children with less severe diabetes have almost normal numbers. More recently Ballad scientists have found that the cells they have discovered have the capacity to actively inhibit inflammation. This is important because diabetes is an inflammatory disease and this might explain why having few of these cells is associated with worse disease. The next step in their research is to understand how to make more of these cells as a way of slowing progression, or reversing this devastating disease.