JDRF is the leading global organization focused on type 1 diabetes (T1D) research. Driven by passionate, grassroots volunteers connected to children, adolescents, and adults with this disease, JDRF is the largest charitable supporter of T1D research.  The goal of JDRF is to improve the lives of every person affected by T1D by accelerating progress on the most promising opportunities for curing, better treating, and preventing T1D.  JDRF collaborates with a wide spectrum of partners who share this goal.  Since its founding in 1970, JDRF has awarded more that $1.5 billion to T1D research.  More than 80 percent of JDRF's expeditures directly support research and research-related education.  Past JDRF research efforts have helped to significantly improve the care of people with this disease, and have expanded the critical scientific understanding of T1D.  JDRF will not rest until T1D is fully conquered.  JDRF's Research Goals JDRF plays a unique role in setting the global direction of diabetes research resources, to ensure that funds are used as effectively as possible as a "cure enterprise" to bring about a world without diabetes and its complications. To that end, the organization has identified a set of cure therapeutic goal areas on which to focus its research funding efforts. JDRF believes some combination of these areas of research holds the best potential to lead to breakthrough cures and treatments for type 1 diabetes and its complications. JDRF will continue to actively pursue research within the framework of the following goals while remaining flexible enough to quickly respond to new opportunities as they arise: Immune Therapies: Stop the immune system attack on the insulin-producing beta cells. Beta Cell Therapies: Restore the body’s ability to make insulin through both the regeneration of insulin-producing beta cells and the replacement of the beta cells lost to diabetes. Glucose Control: Dramatically improve blood glucose control while avoiding dangerous highs and lows in people at all stages of type 1 diabetes. Complications Therapies: Free people from the devastating long-term complications of type 1 diabetes, including diseases of the eyes, nerves, kidneys, and heart Locally, JDRF is currently funding multi-year, multi-million dollar research projects at the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason, University of Washington, and the UW Institute for Systems Biology. For more information, www.jdrf.org.