I could find a Topic specifically for Type 2, but not Type 1. Fussenegger’s group at ETH Zurich has a new report on their gene therapy combined with nitroglycerine patch. Very interesting. I’m (thankfully) not affected, but there are some on this forum who are. Should we have a thread for all medical advances, or leave it specific?
Nitroglycerin-responsive gene switch for the on-demand production of therapeutic proteins | Nature Biomedical Engineering
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Thank you bossybabby. I admit that I might have understood less than 5% of that article, but it appears to relate to Type 2, where the body continues to produce insulin but it is either insufficient or the body is unable to use it properly. Not to Type 1, a different condition, where the body ceases producing insulin.
I don’t see the described method producing insulin.
But thank you for your kind thoughts.
Maybe we should have a general thread on Diabetes, then. I assumed they were aiming at eventually implanting modified islet cells and then causing NO production to stimulate them to produce insulin. That would be the golden goal. Here’s a layman’s article:
Interesting stuff!
The nature article is explicit in that this is for type 2 only, and for obesity.
… can successfully treat experimental type 2 diabetes and obesity in mice over a prolonged period, without affecting parameters such as heart rate and blood pressure
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Two please, to cover the two types of diabetes.
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There is already a thread for Diabetes Type 2, and now we have a Type 1 thread also.
The third (but minor) blood-sugar problem is Reactive hypoglycemia.
Does anyone else suffer from that?
So, type 1 too has recently been cured in vivo in mice experiments.
… The pancreatic islet is the only human tissue that produces insulin in response to rising blood glucose levels. In type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks and slowly destroys these islets, leading to insulin deficiency. Remarkable progress has been made regarding the transplantation of islets, which remains a promising means of restoring insulin production.
However, a major challenge has been replicating the blood-vessel-rich environment that native islets rely on for survival. Now, researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) have led a study where they transplanted islets along with engineered blood-vessel-forming cells – successfully reversing diabetes in mice.
“This work lays the foundation for subcutaneous [under the skin] islet transplants as a relatively safe and durable treatment option for type 1 diabetes,” said the study’s lead author, Ge Li, PhD, a research associate at WCM’s Department of Medicine.
…
The next steps are to continue with preclinical trials to ensure the implant is safe and effective.
“Ultimately, the potential of surgical implantation of these vascularized islets needs to be examined for their safety and efficacy in additional preclinical models,” said co-author Dr Rebecca Craig-Schapiro, associate professor of surgery at Weill Cornell.
The researchers hope the novel transplantation approach will be available to people with type 1 diabetes in the next few years.
Islet transplantation is nothing new, it’s been happening in humans for a number of years. The challenge has always been that our bodies reject foreign cells sooner or later.
One major problem so far, from what I glean, was that the islets weren’t properly nourished as there were no (or not enough) blood vessels supporting them, and so they died after a relatively short time. In this study however, and as quoted, the researchers managed to solve this issue.
Also I’ve read that transplanted islet cells don’t reliably deliver insulin at the levels needed. Perhaps the nitro patch can help with that. Anyway, encouraging science.