After failing to live up to its early promise of becoming a cure for type 1 diabetes, the procedure of transplanting insulin-producing islet cells…
Tag: Islet Cell Transplant
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.
“I’m a big proponent of islet cell transplantation for type 2 diabetics,” says Dr. Gordon Weir, who is one of the world’s foremost experts on islet cell transplantation as Co-Head of the Section on Islet Cell and Regenerative Biology, the Diabetes Research and Wellness Foundation Chair at the Joslin Diabetes Center, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. “I tell people this and they look at me like I’m a little nuts. But, I believe there is no reason it couldn’t work effectively. I’m actually more optimistic about islet cell transplant for type 2 than for type 1.”
The biomaterial holding the islet cells—which is completely synthetic, is 96 percent water, and which Garcia described as having the consistency of diluted Jello-O—and that was infused into the mice, however, addresses several of these problems.
Of course, given the opportunity cure type 1 diabetes, to eradicate the condition causing me to take insulin injections twice a day, causing me to black out a few times a year, destroying my fingertips with blood sugar testing, and generally making my life unpleasant and inconvenient on one side of the scale and a living hell on the other, I leapt at it.
Participating in a clinical trial is truly giving of oneself. No matter how my story ends, I will never question my decision to have tried...
The bio artificial pancreas is implanted subcutaneously and oxygen is delivered to the islets via injection...
The first day off insulin I ate a ham sandwich. My blood sugar didn’t go up. Now I knew how regular people felt after they ate a sandwich. I considered it a miracle...
We have shown that beta cells from adult human islets can be made to multiply in tissue culture, but during this process they lose their ability to produce insulin...