When you sign up to run, volunteer, or sponsor Renegade Run you are committing to Type One’s mission.
Our Mission
Type One, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, recognizes a world free of type 1 diabetes (T1D) and is dedicated to that future by raising public awareness and funds toward a cure through research. “Type One Cares” is a campaign dedicated to building a community to assist those affected by T1D with support, education and endowment, so they can live a powerful life beyond the diagnosis. Renegade Run Obstacle Course Race is a highly successful fundraising event that caters to fitness enthusiasts of all levels and focuses on camaraderie, goodwill and celebration of life. We support the life changing research of the Faustman Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital who is leading the way toward a cure for T1D.
Type One Cares
Our campaign is committed to recognizing the financial impact that families dealing with type 1 diabetes experience and seeks to provide scholarships empowering them to live beyond the diagnosis. Through your generous donations, Type One Cares will provide financial support when families need it the most. The program is designed to provide financial aid to those living with T1D, assist with expenses of insulin related supplies and type 1 diabetes summer camp program tuition.
“Thank you so much for your kind donation, due to your fun and creative fund raising efforts with Renegade Run, to support our research at Massachusetts General Hospital. Your donation is helping us advance our Phase II clinical trial – which is now treating patients – to investigate the BCG vaccine as a type 1 diabetes reversal treatment. It will also help support related projects, such as research on pancreas function and human regulatory T cells, that will allow us to better understand type 1 diabetes and ways to help people with the disease.” – Denise Faustman, MD, PhD
The Faustman Lab
For the last 20 years, the Faustman Lab has been the leader in investigating the potential of the BCG vaccine to prevent and reverse autoimmune diseases including type 1 diabetes. This research has advanced from early mouse studies, moving to mechanistic, in vitro trials and now a multi-trial human clinical research program. The Faustman Lab showed that BCG boosts a cytokine called TNF, which is beneficial in autoimmune diseases by directly eliminating the autoreactive T cells that attack the pancreas, as well as by inducing beneficial immune cells called regulatory T cells (Tregs).
The study at MGH looks increasingly like a long-term cure for type 1 diabetes, with a newly released study showing patients have normal blood sugar levels eight years after a clinical trial. In research published in journal npj Vaccines, patients who had been treated with the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine — an inexpensive, generic vaccine used around the world to prevent tuberculosis — had normal blood sugar levels eight years after the trial ended. While it took three years for patients to see results from the vaccine, two doses of the drug spaced four weeks apart were still having a lasting impact eight years later. All of the patients in the studies showed a durable and significant improvement in HbA1c. Learn more njp Vaccines paper.
For more information on the MGH clinical trials and the research study, please download their BCG Brochure. Visit their website and follow them on Facebook.
On behalf of the 1.25 million people living with type 1 diabetes, their family and friends we thank you for your commitment to our mission and our promise to find a cure!
BCG Therapy For T1D
The bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine is a microorganism developed as a vaccine for tuberculosis 100 years ago and used as therapy for bladder cancer 40 years ago. More recently, BCG has shown therapeutic promise for type 1 diabetes (T1D) and several other autoimmune diseases. In T1D, BCG restored blood sugars to near normal, even in patients with advanced disease of >20 years duration. This clinically important effect may be driven by resetting of the immune system and the shifting of glucose metabolism from overactive oxidative phosphorylation, a state of minimal sugar utilization, to aerobic glycolysis, a state of high glucose utilization, for energy production. The mechanistic findings support the Hygiene Hypothesis and reveal the immune and metabolic synergy of mycobacterial reintroduction in modern humans.