Immunotherapy Strategies for the Prevention and Treatment of Distinct Stages of Type 1 Diabetes: An Overview

Type 1 diabetes mellitus is a heterogeneous disorder characterized by destruction of pancreatic beta cells, culminating in absolute insulin deficiency. The goals of Type 1 diabetes care, established by the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT), are to achieve good glycemic control, to prevent hyperglycaemia (which is associated with long-term microvascular and macrovascular complications) and to avoid recurrent episodes of hypoglycaemia (which may have adverse effects on cognitive function). However, despite continuing optimization of insulin therapy regimes, the actual hormonal substitutive administration acts only to treat the symptoms without an effect on disease pathology and etiopathogenesis. In recent decades, a great deal of interest has been focused on prevention approaches in high-risk individuals, based on the hypothesis that a therapeutic intervention, if applied at the early stage of disease, might contribute to maintaining endogenous beta cell function by preserving the residual beta cell reservoir from autoimmune attack. This manuscript provides an overview of the most important immunotherapeutic interventions established so far for Type 1 diabetes treatment at different stages of disease that have reached an advanced stage of assessment.