Participating in a marathon is a pretty amazing feat for anyone, but five people taking part in the 26.2-mile Bank of America Chicago Marathon on Oct. 7 share something that makes this amazing feat extra special: all of them were formerly dependent on insulin, but have had an islet cell transplant and are now living their lives diabetes-free!
Islet cell transplantation is what connects the five together as members of the athletic team Cellmates On The…
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We were familiar with the company ViaCyte through its former identity as NovoCell, when we reported that they’d managed to successfully control diabetes in mice using embryonic stem cells back in 2008.
Last year, they changed their name, but their two-part mission remained the same: first, to create fully functioning beta cells (the specific kind of islet cells that make insulin and amylin) from embryonic stem cells, and then to find a way to combat…
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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…
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By
AmyT on
October 20, 2010
Embryonic stem cell research has huge potential toward a cure for diabetes. OK, I said it. If you find this topic too upsetting, you can opt out now and don’t bother reading the rest of this post…
Strides are being made in turning stem cells into functioning beta cells, and some really exciting news coming out of the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) is the possibility of turning stem cells into beta cells…
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By
AmyT on
September 4, 2009
{Editor’s Note: apparently I’m all over Time magazine this week, or it’s all over me…}
Finally, some breakthrough diabetes research that does not only involve mice! Time magazine’s August 31 issue reports on new a stem-cell-based study that involved taking skin cells from two people with type 1 diabetes, exposing the cells to “a cocktail of three genes that converted them back to an embryonic state,” and then “instructing” the cells to grow into beta…
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