A UK network for cell therapy trials opens in September: what it could mean for you
The Type 1 Diabetes Grand Challenge is funding a UK-wide network so cell therapy trials are easier to find, refer into and take part in.
Nothing about your insulin, your kit or your appointments changes because of this. What is being built is the plumbing behind future cell therapy trials in the UK.
- Cell therapy means replacing the insulin-making beta cells the immune system attacked when type 1 started.
- The Type 1 Diabetes Grand Challenge is putting up to £2 million over three years into a UK-wide trials network.
- The funding call opens on 1 September 2026, and research organisations apply for it, not people with type 1.
- It pays for a coordinating centre, accredited lead delivery sites and referral routes meant to make access fairer.
- This is infrastructure, not a treatment, and there is nothing here for anyone to sign up to.
What opens on 1 September, and who it is for
The Type 1 Diabetes Grand Challenge, a partnership between Diabetes UK, Breakthrough T1D and the Steve Morgan Foundation, said on 28 July 2026 that its UK-wide Type 1 Diabetes Cell Therapy Clinical Trials Network has moved from planning into set-up. A funding call opens on 1 September 2026, with up to £2 million available over three years, part of a £5 million, five-year commitment announced in August 2025. It is underpinned by research infrastructure from the NIHR, the body that funds and supports health research across the NHS.
The applicants are research organisations bidding to run the network. The award pays for a coordinating centre, a national clinical director, and accredited lead delivery sites to run the trials. No sites have been named, because none have been chosen.
Whether you hear about a trial should not depend on your hospital
At the moment, whether a cell therapy trial ever reaches you depends heavily on which hospital you attend, whether it does research, and whether someone there thinks to mention it. The network’s stated aim includes referral pathways to improve equitable access to trials, which is the unglamorous half of the announcement and the half that could change who gets asked. Plenty would still vary: studies set narrow entry criteria, and the network is built around accredited specialist sites rather than local clinics, so distance counts too.
There is history behind why that matters. The UK has run an islet transplant programme since 2008, for people with type 1 who have frequent severe hypos (blood glucose dropping dangerously low) and have lost the warning signs. Fewer than 350 islet transplants took place here between 2008 and 2022. Whatever the science does next, the way in has always been narrow.
Where cell therapy has got to so far
Several beta cell therapies are already in clinical trials around the world, and more are at an earlier stage. In one trial of lab-grown beta cells, some participants no longer needed insulin. The obstacle is the immune system: most transplant approaches need lifelong immunosuppressant drugs to stop the new cells being rejected, and those drugs raise the risk of serious infections and some cancers, so only a small number of people can safely have them.
Diabetes UK’s March 2026 research round-up covered gene-edited donor beta cells still alive and making insulin fourteen months after transplant, in someone taking no immunosuppressants. That was one person, in a small early safety study. Nobody can say from that when, or whether, this becomes something you could be offered, and the announcement puts no date on it. What changes is the route in: if these therapies are ready, finding a trial becomes a system rather than luck.
Worth knowing right now
Questions that make an appointment useful
When it's urgent
A severe hypo is an emergency. If someone with type 1 is confused, unable to swallow safely, fitting or unconscious, call 999 straight away. Never put food or drink into the mouth of someone who cannot swallow safely, and never delay the call to test first.