A new study led by researchers from Cardiff University, King’s College London (KCL), Swansea University and the University of Calgary has revealed that Janssen’s psoriasis drug, Stelara (ustekinumab), shows promise in treating childhood diabetes.
Published in Nature Medicine and funded by a Medical Research Council and National Institute for Health and Care Research partnership, the study found that Stelara was more effective in treating the early stages of type 1 diabetes (T1D) in children and adolescents.
Accounting for approximately 10% of diabetes cases in the UK, T1D occurs when the pancreas does not produce insulin or makes very little insulin.
Since 2009, the immunotherapy Stelara has been used to treat psoriasis, a skin condition characterised by flaky patches of skin that affects around 60 million people globally, as well as other immune conditions, including psoriatic arthritis, severe Crohn’s disease and severe ulcerative colitis.
In the study, researchers tested Stelara in 72 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 with recent-onset T1D.
They found that Stelara preserved vital insulin-producing cells known as Th17 cells and also identified the specific immune cells that cause this destruction, enabling precise and targeted therapies to maximise benefits and minimise side effects.
“[Th17] cells make up only one in 1,000… blood immune cells, but they seem to play an important role in destroying insulin-producing cells. This explains why [Stelara] has so few side effects,” explained KCL’s professor Tim Tree.
Furthermore, after 12 months of using Stelara, researchers found that C-peptide levels, a sign that the body is producing insulin, were 49% higher.
Dr Peter Taylor, Cardiff University’s Systems Immunity Research Institute, commented: “It is now possible with a simple finger-prick antibody test to detect children who will develop T1D years before they need insulin.
“Combining screening in this way with early treatment with [Stelara] seems a very promising approach to preventing the need for insulin.”
Further clinical trials are required to confirm whether Stelara could treat T1D and to determine which patients would benefit most from the treatment.

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/psoriasis-drug-shows-promise-for-treating-childhood-diabetes