Type-1 Diabetes Cured In Mice: Gene Therapy targeting 12-Lipoxygenase at Eastern Virginia Medical School's Strelitz Diabetes Center

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Gene Therapy targeting 12-Lipoxygenase at Eastern Virginia Medical School's Strelitz Diabetes Center

Studies have shown that deleting the gene that produces 12-LO can stop Type 1 diabetes in mice. Studies of donated human beta cells have allowed the researchers to confirm that the enzyme is the cause of beta cell destruction from inflammation. "We've now confirmed that 12-LO is a relevant target in humans, particularly in the pancreas, and will help lead to new therapies," says the EVMS researchers.

http://www.emaxhealth.com/1020/23/35409/targeting-newly-identified-enzyme-could-cure-type-1-diabetes.html

Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism , doi:10.1210/jc.2009-1102

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What is in This Blog?

My goal, starting in 2012, (and including as much before then as possible) is to have a blog entry for every treatment reported to have cured type-1 diabetes in NOD mice, or any other animal.

Each entry in this blog is a report of one cure for type-1 diabetes in an animal.

Each title will be of the form TREATMENT by DOCTOR at RESEARCH INSTITUTION.

Each entry will have the date the cure was reported, one or more links to news reports, press releases, or research papers, and maybe a paragraph on the cure.

But I don't plan to put much analysis or discussion in these blog entries. I'm leaving comments open for now, but I really only want comments to note when one of these cures moves to a later stage of research.

Why This Blog?

This blog exists because of frustration. My frustration at constantly hearing that type-1 diabetes had been cured in mice (again), but never hearing that it was cured in people.

My way of dealing with this frustration is to try to keep track of the number of times people cure type-1 diabetes in animals. After all the first step to understanding something, is to catalog it. You can think of this blog as raw material for future research into type-1 cures in mice.

At the very least, this blog will help the entire type-1 diabetes research community keep track of how many mice cures are developed each year, what happens to them, and how long it takes to happen. I hope that the data found will fuel other types of "research into research" on type-1 diabetes.

About Animal Experiments

Things to remember about experiments on animals (sometimes called "pre-clinical trials"):

* Most research is not successful.

* New research done in animals is at least 10-15 years away from general availability to people.

* Most research done in animals never progresses to people.

* Although NOD mice are generally considered the best animal model of type-1 diabetes, they differ from people with type-1 in many ways.

* Recently we have cured type-1 diabetes in animals many times each year, but so far, none of those cures has turned into a cure for people.