The Lloyd lab is involved in two large multi-investigator projects that seek to determine the cause of Type 1 diabetes (T1D). A large body of evidence has implicated type B enteroviruses such as Coxsackie B4 virus as a trigger or etiology driving autoimmune dysfunction that causes diabetes.
Dr. Lloyd has assumed a major role in the Network for Pancreatic Organ Donors Virus Working group (nPOD-V), a consortium of international investigators collaborating on coordinated analysis of pancreas and other tissues from persons with T1D. The role in this project is to try to amplify and culture viruses from the pancreatic, spleen and lymph nodes tissues of cadaveric donors that have T1D or are autoantibody positive at the time of death.
Dr. Lloyd, together with Dr. Joe Petrosino in the Department of Molecular Virology and Microbiology and BCM Center for Microbiome and Metagenetics are also collaborating on a much larger clinical project, the TEDDY study directed by NIDDK. TEDDY seeks to determine the environmental trigger(s) for development of T1D, and we are beginning the largest microbiome study attempted to date and the most detailed virome project attempted, involving over 19,000 human samples. We are amplifying and culturing out viruses from all 19,000 plus patient samples.