Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a relentless autoimmune disease that affects millions of people worldwide, with incidence rates rising by 3% to 5% each year in many regions. Finding a cure—or even a vaccine to prevent its onset—requires an unprecedented level of coordinated global effort. JDRF (formerly the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) has been at the forefront of this fight for over five decades, but its most impactful work in recent years has come through building, funding, and managing a sprawling network of international partnerships. By connecting researchers, clinicians, data scientists, and patient advocates across borders, JDRF has transformed T1D from a disease managed with insulin into a condition increasingly understood at the molecular level—and one targeted by dozens of emerging therapies. This expansion examines how JDRF’s global collaborations accelerate discoveries, break down scientific silos, and bring the world closer to a future without insulin dependence.

The Imperative for Global Collaboration in T1D Research

Type 1 diabetes is not a single disease phenotype; it varies widely among individuals and across populations. Genetic predisposition differs between ethnic groups, environmental triggers vary by geography, and the natural history of autoimmune destruction is influenced by factors ranging from vitamin D exposure to viral infections. No single country’s research infrastructure can address this complexity alone. International collaboration allows scientists to pool large, diverse patient cohorts—essential for robust genetic and biomarker studies—and to share expensive resources like biorepositories, imaging facilities, and clinical trial networks.

Furthermore, the drug development pipeline for T1D is notoriously long and costly. Bringing a new immune-modulating agent or beta-cell replacement therapy from bench to bedside can take 15 years or more. Global partnerships enable multi-center trials that recruit participants faster, compare efficacy across heterogeneous populations, and harmonize outcome measures—making results more generalizable and accelerating regulatory approval. JDRF recognized early that the most sustainable path to a cure does not run through a single lab or country, but through a connected global ecosystem of discovery.

The Search for Environmental Triggers

A major focus of international collaboration is the Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) study, a consortium involving sites in the United States, Finland, Germany, Sweden, and Australia. JDRF is a key funder of TEDDY, which has followed thousands of children from birth to identify genetic and environmental factors that trigger islet autoimmunity. Findings from TEDDY have influenced dietary guidelines, probiotic research, and viral vaccine development—insights that would have been impossible without a truly global cohort.

The JDRF International Network: A Connected Research Ecosystem

At the heart of JDRF’s partnership strategy is the JDRF International Network, an ever-expanding web of research centers, academic institutions, and industry allies. This network does not merely fund isolated projects; it builds intentional connections between scientists who might otherwise compete rather than collaborate. Regular workshops, shared data repositories, and cross-institutional training programs ensure that breakthroughs in one continent quickly inform experiments on another.

Data Sharing Platforms

One of the network’s most valuable outputs is the T1D Index, a global data platform that dynamically tracks T1D incidence, prevalence, mortality, and clinical outcomes across nearly every country. The Index provides real-time insights for policymakers, researchers, and public health officials, helping them allocate resources where they are most needed. It also serves as a benchmark for measuring the impact of new therapies and prevention strategies in different populations.

Multi-Center Clinical Trials

JDRF has funded or co-funded dozens of international clinical trials through its network. A standout example is the Teplizumab Prevention Trial (TN-10), conducted across sites in the United States, Europe, and Canada. This trial demonstrated that a two-week course of teplizumab, an anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody, could delay progression to clinical T1D by a median of 2.7 years in at-risk individuals. The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, were hailed as the first-ever disease-modifying therapy for T1D. Without the international multicenter design, recruiting enough subjects with high-risk genetic profiles would have taken years longer—if it had been possible at all.

Flagship Initiatives Driving Progress

JDRF’s international partnerships extend beyond traditional research grants into ambitious, large-scale initiatives designed to tackle specific barriers. Three programs deserve particular attention.

The Global Research Grants Program

JDRF awards Global Research Grants to projects that involve investigators from at least two different countries. These grants are deliberately structured to encourage shared resources: a lab in Germany might develop a novel immune assay, while a team in the United States provides the clinical samples and a collaborator in the United Kingdom handles bioinformatics. This distributed model maximizes efficiency and accelerates the translation of basic science into clinical tools. Since 2010, the program has funded over 350 projects across 35 countries.

Artificial Pancreas and Closed-Loop Systems

Nowhere is international partnership more visible than in the development of automated insulin delivery systems. JDRF co-founded the Artificial Pancreas Consortium, a transatlantic group that includes academic centers in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Israel. The consortium’s work led directly to the first hybrid closed-loop system approved by the FDA (Medtronic’s 670G) and has since evolved into next-generation devices that integrate dual-hormone delivery and machine-learning algorithms. JDRF also partnered with the Helmsley Charitable Trust to fund large-scale outpatient trials across Europe and Australia, demonstrating real-world safety and efficacy.

Stem Cell–Derived Therapies

Perhaps the most transformative breakthrough on the horizon is the use of stem cell–derived beta cells to restore insulin production. JDRF was an early supporter of ViaCyte (now Vertex Pharmaceuticals), which developed a device containing encapsulated, insulin-secreting cells derived from human embryonic stem cells. The initial Phase 1/2 trials were conducted at centers in Canada and the United States, with JDRF providing critical funding for manufacturing scale-up and immune-protection strategies. International partnerships with the University of Alberta and the University of Miami are now exploring ways to prevent immune rejection without lifelong immunosuppression.

Transformative Breakthroughs from Collaborative Research

The fruits of JDRF’s international approach are manifold. Below are some of the most significant advances that would have been unlikely—or impossible—without cross-border collaboration.

Beta Cell Regeneration and Protection

Understanding how to regenerate or protect the body’s own beta cells is a holy grail of T1D research. Through multi-country projects, JDRF-funded scientists have identified several druggable pathways, including the role of the PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint in preserving beta cell mass. A team from Sweden, Australia, and the United States demonstrated that a combination of GLP-1 receptor agonists and anti-inflammatory agents could increase residual beta cell function in newly diagnosed patients. These findings are now being tested in a global Phase 2 trial called BANDIT, coordinated across 20 centers in Europe and Australia.

Immune-Modulating Therapies

Beyond teplizumab, JDRF has supported international trials of other immune interventions. The ATLAS trial (Anti-Thymocyte Globulin and Liraglutide for the Safety and Efficacy of T1D) enrolled participants from India, Brazil, and the United States, testing a combination of two established drugs. The international design allowed researchers to quickly determine that the regimen was safe and showed promise in preserving C-peptide levels. Similarly, the T1DAL trial of abatacept (CTLA4-Ig) involved sites in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and demonstrated a 40% reduction in the decline of beta-cell function over two years.

Improved Diagnostic and Monitoring Tools

Earlier detection of T1D is critical for enrolling prevention trials and initiating insulin therapy before metabolic decompensation. JDRF’s JDRF nPOD (Network for Pancreatic Organ Donors with Diabetes) is a unique international resource: a biobank of pancreata from deceased organ donors with T1D, autoantibodies, or at-risk genetics. nPOD receives tissue from over 100 procurement centers across the United States, Europe, and Australia. Samples have been used to map the natural history of islet destruction, identify new autoantibody targets, and develop non-invasive imaging biomarkers that can track beta cell mass in living patients.

Expanding Global Reach: Regional Partnerships

JDRF does not operate as a monolithic entity. Instead, it has established dedicated national and regional affiliates that tailor global priorities to local needs.

JDRF Europe

With offices in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, JDRF Europe coordinates the INNODIA consortium, a public-private partnership funded by the European Union’s Innovative Medicines Initiative. INNODIA brings together 31 academic institutions and 11 pharmaceutical companies to harmonize clinical trial designs, develop a shared database of biomarkers, and train the next generation of T1D researchers. The consortium has already launched several pan-European studies, including a trial of the JAK1/2 inhibitor baricitinib to preserve beta cell function.

JDRF Australia

Australia’s large, genetically homogeneous T1D population makes it a prime location for clinical trials. JDRF Australia administers the Australian Type 1 Diabetes Clinical Research Network, which connects more than 60 hospitals and clinics. The network has played a pivotal role in testing automated insulin delivery systems and in the ENDIA study, a prospective cohort of babies with a family history of T1D that follows them from pregnancy through childhood. ENDIA is one of the few studies to include detailed dietary and environmental data from the first trimester onward, and its findings are fed back into international consortia like TEDDY.

JDRF India

India has one of the fastest-growing T1D populations, yet access to care and research capacity remain limited. JDRF India has forged partnerships with the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences to conduct epidemiological studies, train diabetes educators, and pilot telemedicine programs. A recent JDRF-funded project in India demonstrated that weekly dosing of insulin degludec was as safe and effective as daily injections in adolescents—a finding with huge implications for compliance in resource-limited settings.

Overcoming Barriers to International Research

Despite the clear benefits, global collaboration in T1D research faces formidable obstacles. JDRF’s success in navigating these barriers offers lessons for other disease foundations.

Funding and Incentive Misalignment

National funding agencies often prioritize domestic research, making it difficult to sustain multi-year, multi-country projects. JDRF addresses this by co-funding grants with foreign organizations—for example, with the Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom or the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation of Canada. This “matching” model ensures that no single nation bears the full cost and that all parties have a stake in the outcomes.

Regulatory and Data Privacy Differences

Clinical trial protocols must comply with different regulatory authorities (FDA, EMA, TGA, etc.) and varying data protection laws (GDPR, HIPAA). JDRF has invested heavily in a central regulatory hub that helps investigators navigate these complexities. For the T1D Index, the foundation collaborated with the International Diabetes Federation and the World Health Organization to secure anonymized, aggregated data that respects local privacy requirements while still enabling cross-country comparisons.

Intellectual Property and Data Sharing

Academic institutions and companies are often reluctant to share proprietary data or biological samples. JDRF has circumvented this by creating pre-competitive consortia where intellectual property is pooled for a defined period, and by requiring grantees to deposit all data in open-access repositories (such as the ImmPort database) within 12 months of publication. This approach has fostered a culture of openness without stifling downstream commercialization.

Future Horizons: Accelerating the Path to Cures

Looking ahead, JDRF’s international partnerships will likely shift focus toward three emerging priorities: precision medicine, gene editing, and global access.

Precision Medicine for T1D

Not all T1D patients respond equally to the same therapy. JDRF’s T1D Precision Medicine Initiative harnesses multi-country biobanks and genetic databases to classify patients into subtypes based on their autoimmune profile, HLA haplotype, age of onset, and residual beta cell function. The goal is to match patients with the most effective prevention or intervention strategies—personalized medicine delivered on a global scale. Pilot projects are underway in Scandinavia, the United States, and China.

Gene Editing and Cell Replacement

CRISPR-based therapies hold the promise of creating immune-evasive beta cells or even correcting the underlying autoimmune process. JDRF has partnered with the CRISPR Consortium, an international group of gene-editing experts, to establish safety guidelines and fund proof-of-concept studies in non-human primates. A major hurdle—delivery of the editing machinery to pancreatic islets—is being tackled by labs in the United States and the United Kingdom, with JDRF bridging basic science and translational development.

Ensuring Global Access

A cure is only valuable if it reaches every patient who needs it. JDRF has launched the Access and Equity Initiative, which works with ministries of health in low- and middle-income countries to integrate new therapies into existing public health systems. By partnering with the World Diabetes Foundation and Médecins Sans Frontières, JDRF is building the infrastructure for the day when a proven cure or vaccine becomes available—ensuring that no child in sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia is left behind.

Conclusion

JDRF’s contributions to advancing T1D research through international partnerships are not merely additive—they are transformative. By weaving together a global network of scientists, clinicians, data managers, and advocates, the foundation has accelerated the pace of discovery from years to months, broken down the walls between countries and disciplines, and moved the entire field closer to the ultimate goal: a world without type 1 diabetes. The breakthroughs in beta cell biology, immune modulation, and automated insulin delivery that have emerged from these collaborations stand as proof that no single institution can solve a disease this complex. Only a connected, international effort—backed by sustained funding and a shared sense of urgency—will deliver the cure that millions of people are waiting for. JDRF’s model offers a blueprint for how to turn that vision into reality, one partnership at a time.