Type-1 Diabetes Cured In Mice: Stem Cells (hESCs) by Rezania and Kieffer at University of British Columbia and BetaLogics

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Stem Cells (hESCs) by Rezania and Kieffer at University of British Columbia and BetaLogics

I'm not sure I should count this as a "cured in mice". Basically the researchers took mice that had a compromised immune system, and then made them diabetic by poisoning their pancreas, and then cured them by implanting human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). I think this proves that they know the recipe to turn hESCs into functional beta cells (a huge advance in itself), but it is not a cure for real type-1 diabetes, because the autoimmune attack would still kill off the new beta cells. The mice used in this experiment did not have autoimmune (type-1) diabetes.

From the abstract:

As graft-derived insulin levels increased over time, diabetic mice were weaned from exogenous insulin and human C-peptide secretion was eventually regulated by meal and glucose challenges.

Abstract: http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2012/06/25/db11-1711.abstract
Press release: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-06/uobc-scc062512.php
News article: http://www.dailyrx.com/news-article/type-1-diabetic-mice-no-longer-need-insulin-treatment-after-stem-cell-transplantation-1

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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.