THE LEONA M. AND HARRY B. HELMSLEY CHARITABLE TRUST

Their core work

The Helmsley Charitable Trust is one of the world's largest private philanthropic funders of Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) research, operating a dedicated T1D Program from New York. In H2020 they appear as a co-funding partner rather than an EU grant recipient — they put philanthropic capital alongside EU money into major diabetes consortia, effectively doubling the firepower of projects they join. Their role is strategic: they help shape research agendas around cure, prevention and mechanistic understanding of T1D, and they bring access to international T1D registries, biobanks and clinical networks outside Europe. For scientists and companies, Helmsley is less a lab and more a catalytic funder that validates and scales promising T1D research programs.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Helmsley's H2020 engagement follows a clear three-step arc in T1D research. In 2015-2018 the focus was infrastructure and discovery — building biobanks, clinical sample networks and biomarker pipelines for prevention, cure and early detection via INNODIA. From 2018 onward the emphasis shifted to clinical endpoints and patient experience through Hypo-RESOLVE, harmonising hypoglycaemia trial data, CGM outputs and patient-reported outcomes. Since 2020, with INNODIA HARVEST, they have moved into mechanistic biology (microbiome, immunology, beta-cell) and into a master-protocol innovation platform aimed at novel therapeutics — signalling a transition from "collect samples and data" to "translate them into therapies".

Helmsley is moving from funding data and sample infrastructure toward backing therapeutic innovation platforms, so partners with drug-development, immunology or microbiome assets for T1D are best positioned for future collaboration.

How they like to work

Helmsley never coordinates and never leads — they join as a participant in very large multi-country consortia (58 partners across 16 countries over just three projects). They are notably loyal to a single research family: two of three projects are INNODIA and its direct sequel, built with the same European academic and clinical network. Partnering with Helmsley means entering an established T1D network where they act as a strategic co-funder rather than a work-package executor.

A concentrated but international network of 58 partners across 16 countries, heavily weighted toward European academic medical centres active in T1D, with Helmsley as the US bridge. Geography is European research-led rather than dispersed globally.

What sets them apart

Helmsley is one of very few US philanthropic foundations that formally joins H2020 consortia as a co-funding partner, so they bring non-EU capital and strategic continuity that a normal grant cannot provide. Among T1D actors they are distinctive for combining a very deep checkbook with a long-term, disease-specific agenda rather than generic health funding. Partner with them when you want a project that can survive beyond the EU grant period and gain visibility in the global T1D research community.

Highlights from their portfolio

• INNODIA
  Flagship pan-European T1D clinical trial and biobank network — the foundation of Helmsley's European T1D strategy and the anchor of their other two projects.
• INNODIA HARVEST
  Direct follow-on to INNODIA that pivots the same network toward a master-protocol innovation platform for novel T1D therapeutics, microbiome and beta-cell biology.
• Hypo-RESOLVE
  Rare large-scale effort to harmonise hypoglycaemia definitions, CGM data and patient-reported outcomes across industry and academic trials — a foundational asset for any future diabetes trial.