Scientists Hold Out Hope for Diabetes Cure

Related Encyclopedia • Addison's Disease • Carcinoid Syndrome • Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia • Cushing's Syndrome More... Related Healthscout Videos Genetic Test For Eye Disease Stopping Diabetic Vision Loss Dialysis At Home Diabetes: One Step Closer To A Cure More... Related Animations • Diabetes More... Related Drug Information • Actonel • Actos • Amaryl • Avandamet More... Related News Articles • Diabetes Epidemic Spreading Worldwide: Experts • Are Common Chemicals Feeding Obesity Epidemic? • Growth Hormone Abuse May Boost Diabetes Risk • Heart Disease, Diabetes, Depression a Deadly Mix More...

Page:  << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >>

Those same steps were taken in the three new studies, reported by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine, the University of Chicago and the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.

Again, diabetes was cured in some, but not all, of the mice -- four of 22 in the Washington University trial, seven of 22 in the University of Chicago trial, and more than half of those in the Boston trial.

What the researchers in all three trials did not see was the transformation of the injected spleen cells into insulin-producing cells, however.

Text Continues Below

---

"We were able to cure mice with established diabetes, [just] not as well as she did," said Anita S. Chong, an associate professor of surgery and a member of the University of Chicago research team. "But this second aspect of her work we were not able to replicate."

The big question now is why insulin production was resumed in just some of the mice, Chong said. There are two possibilities, she said -- either a small percentage of insulin-producing cells survived the initial autoimmune attack and swung back into action when the attack stopped, or new islet cells were being produced from surviving stem cells.

Either way, the result of the studies opens up a new route for diabetes therapy, Chong said, showing that "a diabetic mouse, even as an adult, has an ability to make new insulin-producing cells."

Dr. David M. Nathan, director of the Diabetes Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, said he's eager to see if the same thing can be done in humans. A proposal for human trial has been approved, Nathan said, and researchers are waiting on the development of a highly sensitive assay that can track immune cells that attack and destroy insulin-producing cells.

"Denise is working feverishly to perfect the assay," Nathan said. "It is trying to pick out a very small number of a huge population of cells, one in every 100,000. To try to go from mice to humans is a huge technical problem, and we cannot start any human studies until we have an assay for those autoimmune cells."

Page:  << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >>