Last week we reported on a story that discussed experiments on mice with type 1 diabetes where their renegade immune cells were removed and replaced with insulin producing cells, which restores function to the pancreas and can cure patients who have had the condition for years. Now,one researcher not directly involved in the study at the City of Hope Beckman Research Institute in Duarte, Calif., has said that although this procedure is not quite ready for human clinical trials yet, it will be coming up in the future.
“This is not going to be in the clinic tomorrow,” says David Serreze, a professor at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. “But is this something you could envision being used sometime in the future? Oh, absolutely.”
“If our therapy is successfully translated to humans, patients will be able to have a life without Type 1 diabetes—that’s the exciting part,” further clarified Defu Zeng, a senior author of the study and an associate professor of hematology and hematopoietic cell transplantation at City of Hop, the Science Blog shared.
Serreze observed that this potential type 1 diabetes cure is combining previous efforts to offer a serious chance at something diabetics have been waiting for for a long time.
“This gives a mechanism where you could use this bone marrow engraftment combined with growth factors to reverse established diabetes—that, I think, is the really big thing there,” Serreze expressed, and added: “The individual components had been known before, but it was a very ingenious way of pulling them all together.”
While it is great that such research is steadily on its way and that scientists seem to know what they are looking for, and hopefully know how to achieve it, as the article is suggesting, now is exactly the time to push for what the JDCA always advocates for – a targeted deadline for achieving this potential cure. We have had promising, sometimes very promising news in the past, but with no targeted date, the research has simply stalled and we have not gotten anywhere.
But if the researchers working on this study set a targeted date – such as 2025, by when a cure for diabetes will be fully developed, this will maximize their efforts and chances for achieving one. The more focused the research, the more time-sensitive deadlines we place, the more we can expect to see results.
As a diabetes donor, we want you to continue helping the non-profits as much as you can, but make sure to always stipulate that your donations are going toward focused research that sets specific deadlines. We all want the same thing at the end – to enjoy a cure-free lifestyle within our lifetime.
– Stoyan
