Remember our BANDIT study? 💙 

BANDIT showed that baricitinib, an immunotherapy drug, could help protect the insulin-producing beta cells in people recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. People who took baricitinib for 48 weeks were able to keep producing more of their own insulin and needed less injected insulin than those who received placebo. This new follow-up study asked an important question: what happens after treatment stops? The results show that some of the benefit was still there six months after stopping baricitinib, but by 12 months the difference between the baricitinib treated and placebo groups was no longer significant. This suggests that while baricitinib can protect beta cells during treatment, its effects gradually wear off once treatment stops. The results also suggest that ongoing treatment is needed to sustain the benefits of baricitinib. 

These findings are an important part of the growing evidence about how we might use immunotherapy to preserve insulin production in type 1 diabetes. 

The BANDIT results have helped pave the way for the next stage of research, the BARICADE trials, large Phase 3 studies being run around the world to see whether baricitinib can preserve beta-cell function after diagnosis and delay the progression to symptomatic (Stage 3) type 1 diabetes. ATIC is currently recruiting for both BARICADE-PRESERVE and BARICADE-DELAY in Australia, giving people with newly diagnosed or early-stage type 1 diabetes the opportunity to be part of this next chapter in research.  

You can read the whole article from Diabetes Care here: https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/doi/10.2337/dc26-1072/172403/Cell-Function-and-Diabetes-Outcomes-1-Year-After?guestAccessKey=a59b1f5d-52e5-494e-9c7c-ad03bd99cea5