Christopher Parish and Charmaine Simeonovic had been working in different laboratories at the John Curtin Medical School of Medical Research at the ANU for decades when they decided to team up.
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The result has been eight years of research that they hope will lead to a new treatment for people in the early stages of type 1 diabetes.
Dr Simeonovic leads the John Curtin School's Diabetes/Transplantation Immunobiology Laboratory.
Professor Parish, who heads the Cancer and Biology Group, told Dr Simeonovic about cancer research he had been doing on the complex sugar heparan sulphate.
''Our collaboration started in the corridor in the old John Curtin School. Chris was talking to me about how [heparan sulphate] might have a role in type 1 diabetes and it went from there,'' Dr Simeonovic recalls.
With the help of other researchers, the pair discovered that insulin-producing cells in the pancreas contained high-levels of heparan sulphate. During type 1 diabetes, the enzyme heparanase destroys the heparan sulphate within the cells, causing their death.
Further research indicated that heparanase inhibitors and heparan sulphate-replacing drugs could protect the cells.
Dr Simeonovic said this might be able to assist patients in the early stages of type 1 diabetes, especially those in the ''honeymoon period'' where their diabetes could still be fairly well regulated or controlled.
''At the time patients are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes they can still have 30 per cent of the beta cells mass still present and that's what we would be trying to preserve,'' she said.
''Ideally, if this therapy was effective, that would eliminate or minimise the need for insulin therapy. But over and above that is the need to prevent the complications that can develop later in a long-time disease onset.''
The research could also be of significance for type 2 diabetes treatment.
A biotechnology company, Beta Therapeutics, has been established to make full use of the clinical findings.
Professor Parish said human trials of a drug treatment could begin within about three years. If these were successful, it could be several more years before the treatment became available.
