Marcus Wraight, BBC South West health reporter

The team found that drugs could activate dormant pancreas cells

Researchers at the Peninsula Medical School (PMS) have been helping people with so-called monogenic diabetes.

It was thought the condition only consisted of Type 1 and Type 2.

The Queen's Anniversary Prize has been given to Exeter University as a PMS partner in recognition of research led by Professor Andrew Hattersley.

It's like having a car that will only work with the right key Prof Andrew Hattersley

For people like Tracey Davis, 33, of Yeovil, Somerset, the PMS's work has meant the end of 17 years of insulin injections three times a day.

She now takes a tablet in both the morning and the evening.

She was recently found to have the new form of the disease, and her body's ability to make its own insulin was reawakened with drugs.

After just a month, she is now free of the injections that she started when she was 16.

"Instead of having to do the injections and feel a bit like a pin-cushion, I have one tablet in the morning and then just before tea. It's much better," she said.

Professor Hattersley wants to produce better treatments

Normally, those with Type 1 diabetes, like Tracey, develop it at an early age and require regular injections because their bodies have stopped producing insulin.

In those patients, part of the pancreas that makes the hormone has died. But the team found that those with the new form of the disease still had the capacity to produce it with the help of medication.

Drugs mean previously dormant cells are able to recognise high blood sugar levels and bring them down. The discovery of monogenic diabetes raises the prospect of hundreds or thousands of patients nationwide being wrongly diagnosed.

Type 2 diabetes mostly occurs at a much older age and generally in those who are overweight. Both types are believed to be as a result of a genetic "pre-disposition".

But monogenic diabetes is thought to be linked much more to a family history.

Personal treatments

Professor Andrew Hattersley said of the work: "These patients have the ability to make insulin. But it's like having a car that will only work with the right key.

"What the recent work has shown is that there are particular drugs that help patients to produce it themselves."

The team's attention is now focused on Type 2 diabetes, to find out why it occurs and whether there are different sub-groups - which also occurs in monogenic diabetes.

Ultimately Prof Hattersley wants to produce better, targeted and more effective treatments that are personal to each patient.

The Queen's Anniversary Prize, a high accolade in Higher Education, was given to the Exeter team in recognition of its world-renowned research.