More islet cell research to share with you today:
We’ve been covering quite a few companies working hard at finding ways to protect islets from immune system attack. First we profiled Cerco Medical, which is also the subject of a documentary film, and a couple of weeks ago we checked in with ViaCyte, of San Diego. Both of those companies are working with stem cells, but today’s company, Canada’s Sernova, is kicking it old school…
Lots of organizations are working on new ways to accomplish islet cell transplantation in which the immune system does not kill off the transplanted cells. If they could do that, we’d likely have a cure for diabetes. But it ain’t easy, especially because we’re talking about transplanting into people whose immune systems are in mega-attack mode to begin with (type 1 diabetics).
The Diabetes Research Institute (DRI) in Florida is currently working on this challenge…
The Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami never fails to sharpen the cutting-edge of D-research. Its latest invention is the so-called “oxygen sandwich” — a sort of gasket gadget designed to keep impermeable plastic from killing off insulin-producing beta cells incubating in the laboratory, bound for transplantation.
From the press release:
“One of the major challenges to islet cell transplantation as the treatment of choice for type 1 diabetes is the shortage of…
As an alternative to transplanting islets into the liver, which has limited success because cells tend to die off there, Dr. Camillo Ricordi and his colleagues at the Diabetes Research Institute in Florida are working on a tiny, implantable device that creates a safe haven for islet production elsewhere in the body. I call it a “reverse IUD” because an IUD is implanted specifically as an intrusion, to interrupt the natural course of cell bonding,…
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