Sarah Richardson The 13th International Congress of the Immunology of Diabetes Society 2013

Sarah Richardson

Sarah Richardson is a Professor of Cellular Biomedicine at the University of Exeter with a passionate interest in type 1 diabetes and Team Science. She leads Islet Biology Exeter (IBEx), a team of principal investigators with complementary expertise in type 1 diabetes research. Her research utilises unique pancreas biobanks and is centred around understanding the disease processes by which beta cells are targeted and destroyed. She has particular interests in how early pancreatic growth may influence the development of different forms of type 1 diabetes, and the role that enteroviruses and anti-viral responses play in the disease. She curates the Exeter Archival Diabetes Biobank, which contains the most extensive and rarest collection of pancreata from patients with recent-onset type 1 diabetes worldwide. She has held prestigious Fellowships from the Wellcome Trust and the Diabetes Research Wellness Foundation, a JDRF 5-year Career Development Award, and is now a Steve Morgan Foundation Grand Challenge Senior Research Fellow. She has contributed to seminal studies identifying factors that protect (or sensitise) beta-cells to immune attack in T1D; she has led multiple institute-based studies which have been pivotal in defining the link between enterovirus infection and T1D; and she had a leading role in research conceptualising endotypes in T1D crucial for identifying subgroups of T1D individuals most likely to respond to specific therapies or interventions.