Type-1 Diabetes Cured In Mice: February 2012

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Hepatic Insulin by Elsner at

The plan for this research was to genetically engineer a virus to create insulin, and then inject that virus into the liver of diabetic animals. The result was normal BG for the one year duration of the trial.

Title: Reversal of Diabetes Through Gene Therapy of Diabetic Rats by Hepatic Insulin Expression via Lentiviral Transduction

Quotes from Abstract:

Within 5–7 days after the virus injection of 7 × 109INS-lentiviral particles the blood glucose concentrations were normalized in the treated animals.

This glucose lowering effect remained stable for the 1 year observation period.

Human C-peptide as a marker for hepatic release of human insulin was in the range of 50–100 pmol/ml serum.

This study shows that the diabetic state can be efficiently reversed by insulin release from non-endocrine cells through a somatic gene therapy approach.

Two different types of animals were used:

autoimmune-diabetic IDDM rats (LEW.1AR1/Ztm-iddm)
streptozotocin-diabetic rats

Abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22354377

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Brown Adipose Tissue Transplant by Gunawardana at Vanderbilt University

Title: Reversal of Type 1 Diabetes in Mice by Brown Adipose Tissue Transplant

Quote from the abstract:

Here, we show that subcutaneous transplants of embryonic brown adipose tissue (BAT) can correct T1D in streptozotocin-treated mice (both immune competent and immune deficient) ... BAT transplants result in euglycemia, normalized glucose tolerance, reduced tissue inflammation, and reversal of clinical diabetes markers such as polyuria, polydipsia, and polyphagia.

Abstract: http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/61/3/674.short

News coverage: http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2012/03/fat-as-diabetes-treatment/

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.