The immune system mistakenly identifying insulin-secreting beta cells as a potential danger and, in turn, destroying them has long been considered…
Category: Cure
This headline turned heads across the diabetes landscape:
“CITY OF HOPE SETS NEW GOAL FOR TYPE 1 DIABETES CURE
More than $50 million in private funding…
Last week, Lucy Hinchion, aged 20 months, became the youngest child in the world to receive her own cord blood to help prevent or delay the onset of…
The diabetes community has been here before, and in the late 1980’s, had the same outcry. We want a cure! JDRF (JDF at the time) listened, embraced the movement, and gave it a name: TORIAC
The initial study, which will start enrolling next year, will involve about ten patients, who will have the stem-cell derived beta cells injected into their forearms, in the hopes that the cells will start producing insulin within the body.
“This approach has the potential to provide diabetics with a new pancreas that is protected from the immune system, which would allow them to control their blood sugar without taking drugs. That’s the dream,” says Daniel Anderson, an associate professor of chemical engineering at MIT, who oversaw Vegas’s work.
Dr. James Shapiro, the man who perfected the islet cell transplant to cure type 1 diabetes, is evolving his groundbreaking research by working on a method of implanting insulin-producing cells under a person’s skin to try and stamp out the condition once and for all.
For Gina’s second transplant (two years after the failure of the first) researchers at City of Hope added a component of treatment called anti-thymoglobbulin induction, or ATG, which is designed to keep the body’s immune system from harming the new islet cells.
Philip J. Shaw of the JDCA argues that their analysis of JDRF funding shows that not only has the amount of money being spent on cure research declined, but that the chunk of money spent on research is a shrinking part of the JDRF’s overall budget.
Faustman says that her work has raised the ire of some scientists and organizations for two reasons: It runs counter to the prevailing research emphasis to either prevent type 1 diabetes, or reverse it in people who have been recently diagnosed with diabetes and, at the time, ran into a stiff political headwind from embryonic stem cell researchers.