About 20 million people in the U.S. have diabetes. Up to 10 percent of these cases are type 1, where the pancreas stops making insulin, and patients must rely on injecting it to stay alive. Now, there are two new breakthroughs: one that could prevent people from getting the disease in the first place, and another that could help diabetes patients make insulin on their own.
Diabetic Noel Wynn looks healthy, but if she isnt vigilant about her health, she could slip into a coma and even die. This body has to last, Wynn says. I am going to do everything I can to prolong my life and prevent anything.
Thats what diabetes research centers on: giving patients the longest, healthiest life possible. Now, researchers are even trying to develop new ways to prevent people from getting it.
Daniel Kaufman, Ph.D., an immunologist at UCLA in Los Angeles, has recently developed a vaccine that could prevent type 1 diabetes. The vaccine works by slowing down the attack on the immune system and saving cells that produce insulin in the pancreas. The vaccine worked on mice, but now, the goal is to vaccinate humans. Kaufman is particularly interested in identifying children who are at risk of developing diabetes and changing their immune responses to prevent the disease from occurring.
Across the country, Luca Inverardi, M.D., a transplantation immunologist at the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine in Florida, hopes to perfect a breakthrough procedure called an islet cell transplant. He believes the procedure could make it so diabetics are no longer dependent on the insulin injections they currently use to stay alive. Patients will require a fraction of the insulin they needed before the transplants, Dr. Inverardi says. Hes run tests on animals by implanting them with a biomechanical mesh piece filled with islet cells from a donor. Dr. Inverardi says the procedure is safer than simply injecting the cells into a patients liver because the patient wont have to rely on drugs to suppress the immune system. This could really represent a major advantage for patients, he says.
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Stuart Wolpert
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University of California, Los Angeles
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