Our current research projects are:

  1. Environmental drivers leading to type 1 diabetes – this project investigates how the gut microbiota, gut metaproteome and gut virome interact during early life in those at risk of type 1 diabetes and whether this predicts the development of islet autoimmunity.
  2. Microbiota targeted dietary supplementation to prevent or treat type 1 diabetes. In collaboration with the ‘TOGeTHER’ trial consortium, we are investigating whether a dietary supplement that releases microbial metabolites is a potential therapy for type 1 diabetes.
  3. Development of an antigen-specific immunotherapy for type 1 diabetes. This project aims to optimise a liposome based therapy by understanding the immunological principles governing epitope selection and targeted delivery for tolerance induction.

Student projects

The Hamilton-Williams lab is looking for students interested in studying the gut microbiome in type 1 diabetes. This project will have a strong emphasis on bioinformatics based approaches and network analysis to understand disease predictors.