[acb-diabetics] article from Diabetes Week

[Patricia LaFrance-Wolf]

May 18, 2011 

New Jersey's Hackensack University Medical Center has announced that it will
partner with Dr. Camillo Ricordi to test a surgical procedure that could
hold the key to a cure for type 1
<http://www.diabeteshealth.com/browse/community/type-1-issues/> diabetes
<http://www.diabeteshealth.com/> .

Ricordi, scientific director of the University of Miami Diabetes Research
Institute, has experimented with implanting insulin
<http://www.diabeteshealth.com/browse/medications/insulin/> -producing
pancreatic islet cells in the abdomens of monkeys rather than in their
livers. The procedure attempts to avoid the problems of auto-immune
reactions when donor cells are implanted into type 1
<http://www.diabeteshealth.com/browse/community/type-1-issues/>  recipients.

In type 1 diabetes, which is considered an auto-immune disease, the body
wrongly attacks pancreatic islet cells, which produce insulin, eventually
destroying them. Transplantation of donor cells is an established procedure,
but the subsequent need for recipients to take drugs to suppress an
auto-immune response to the foreign cells is expensive, burdensome,
life-long, and often opens the door to other diseases.

Ricordi has had some success with his approach in monkeys, and the
partnership with Hackensack University Medical Center will assist him as he
moves into experimenting with human test subjects. Ricordi will recruit four
subjects, none of whom is responding to current treatments, and begin
working with them next year.

Another problem is that the number of transplant donors, which can even
include cadavers, is too small to meet the needs of every potential
transplant recipient. So the partnership will also look into ways to create
a reliable supply of islet cells.

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