Prof. Colin Mark Dayan

Colin Mark Dayan's research has been in thyroid disease and diabetes spanning laboratory science through clinical trials to large data linkage studies. In 1991, I was the first to clone and define antigen specific T cells from the target organ in Graves disease (PNAS), demonstrating that infiltrating T cells in the target organ of autoimmunity have a very high frequency (>70%) of self-antigen specificity representing a highly focused but multi-antigenic/multi-epitopic response. This has later been replicated in other autoimmune disease e.g. type 1 diabetes (T1D). In collaboration with colleagues at KCL, we extended this work to define self-antigen target epitopes in T1D including the first evidence for antigen specific regulatory T cells (JCI, 2004, Diabetologia 2010) leading to a first-in-man demonstration of the safety of islet-specific peptide immunotherapy for T1D (Science Translational Medicine, 2017). EU FP7 programme funding and a patent for the use of Gold Nanoparticles for immunotherapy followed (EP No: 16715309.7 US No: 15/561935). Since the target organ (pancreas) is not readily accessible for sampling in T1D, we developed lymph node sampling in humans demonstrating antigen specific responses to intradermal challenge with antigen (2015) which we have since replicated with self-antigen challenge (in preparation). To facilitate more rapid progress in T1D immunotherapy, I established with colleagues the UK T1D Immunotherapy Consortium , which now has 27 adult and paediatric sites and has enrolled more than 350 newly-diagnosed patients in 15 studies of immunotherapy since 2015. In 2011 we reported the first large RCT of diet vs diet and exercise in new-onset type 2 diabetes (Lancet) – indicating for the first time that diet alone is as effective as diet and exercise for glycaemic control and weight reduction. Since 2010, I have developed All Wales data-linkage cohorts with SAIL (Farr Institute) reporting population based T1D hospital admission and death rates in children, teenage pregnancy rates. We have also shown in the most robust study todate that educational attainment in children with T1D is similar overall to their peers but varies widely with attained HbA1c and in a combined analysis if 21 immunotherapy trials shown a clear relationship between HbA1c and preservation of C-Peptide. Most recently we have led in Innodia in establishing the T1D Plus platform for adaptive combination trials beginning with the comparison of Verapamil versus placebo and extending to the combination of verapamil + other immunotherapies across more than 20 sites in Europe and Australia. In the last 3 years I have provided support to Provention Bio in regulatory approvals for teplizumab including speaking to the “unmet need” at the EMA and the “historic” FDA scientific meeting in May 2021 and the licensing of Tzield in 2022. In 2024, we published the first clinical trial evidence of the role of IL-17-secreting T celIs in T1D in the USTEKID trial. I received the David Rumbough award from Breakthrough T1D in 2024.