Nearly 40 years ago, UCSF scientists ushered in the era of type 1 diabetes prevention. UCSF Diabetes Center is now working to solve the biggest challenges standing between patients and functional cures for the disease.

This year marks our 25th Anniversary and a quarter century of science aimed at saving lives and revolutionizing what the world thought possible in diabetes prevention and care. Our director Mark Anderson sits down with senior science writer and UCSF News Laura López González to discuss what the future may hold, including a functional cure. 

Committed to nurturing the next generation of leaders in diabetes research, The American Diabetes Association (ADA) postdoc award has for decades supported outstanding researchers in their pursuit of innovative and impactful research projects. This year, two postdocs have been named recipients. Mehdi Soleymani-Goloujeh PhD, from Parent and Tang labs, and Zhuldyz Zhanzak PhD, in Anderson Lab. 

The National Institute of Health National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIH NIDDK) has named UCSF Diabetes Center a Diabetes Research Center, one of a premier group of national institutions that have established an existing base of high-quality, diabetes-related research. The Type 1 Diabetes Research Center at UCSF integrates multiple research programs in areas of islet biology, immunology, and metabolism.

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet have award the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi and their discoveries which have completely helped change the landscape of our understanding of how autoimmune diseases are prevented and controlled.

The Rally for Medical Research has one urgent purpose: to make funding for the National Institutes of Health a national priority. What began as a single day of advocacy in 2013 has become an annual nationwide movement uniting millions of patients, advocates, researchers, clinicians, and partner organizations.

William J. Rutter PhD, who in 1977 with his colleagues achieved the first major triumph of genetic engineering by isolating the gene for rat insulin and transplanting it into bacteria, eventually leading to the mass production of genetically engineered insulin to treat diabetes, passed away on June 11, 2025.

Diabetes Center looks brightly into the future when it will in large part move into the new Barbara and Gerson Bakar Research and Academic Building, along with other research programs for cancer, microbiology, immunology and cell biology. The Research space will be focused on promoting team-based science, with labs organized by discovery themes rather than specialty areas, to hasten scientific breakthroughs. Built into the hillside, the 323,000 square-foot facility will have nine stories above ground to the west and eight to the east.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), one of the world’s largest institutes dedicated to regenerative medicine, granted over $22.5 million to nine projects through the Quest Awards Program, which fosters the discovery of innovative stem cell-based and gene therapy technologies.

One of these projects was award to Qizhi Tang, PhD, for her project "Genome editing of human Tregs to enable combinational tolerogenic therapy with T cell targeted biologics for T1D."

Diabetes Center Director Mark Anderson MD PhD has been awarded the prestigious Coley Award from the Cancer Research Institute. The Coley Award honors groundbreaking contributions to cancer research, validating and highlighting the impact of innovative work, particularly in immunotherapy and recognizes Dr.