Clinical type 1 diabetes is preceded by autoimmune destruction of the pancreatic beta-cells. However, progression to disease is not uniform. One challenge facing current diabetes research is therefore to identify biomarker profiles that accurately reflect the individual stage of type 1 diabetes pathogenesis and develop new techniques to distinguish between these profiles and associated diabetes risks. This report highlights some of the recent studies on diabetes biomarkers, with a particular focus on zinc transporter ZnT8, presented at the EASD meeting in September 2008 in Rome, Italy.