In the long human struggle against autoimmune disease, a pair of researchers who began their scientific journey in Far North Queensland have arrived at something genuinely new. Working at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Rafid Al-Hallaf and colleagues have identified an antibody — called x-mAb — that appears to disarm only the rogue immune cells responsible for destroying insulin-producing tissue in type 1 diabetes, leaving the rest of the immune system untouched. Early mouse trials showed complete remission in all treated animals, a result that has shifted the horizon of what researcher