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Researchers are inching ever closer to bringing the latest stem-cell technologies from bench to bedside — and are, in the process, learning more about some diseases that long have remained medical black boxes. This week, scientists at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) reported the first success in generating new populations of insulin-producing cells using skin cells of Type 1 diabetes patients. The achievement involved the newer embryo-free technique for generating stem cells, and marked the first step toward building a treatment that could one day replace a patient's faulty insulin-making cells with healthy, functioning ones. (See the top 10...

Last week, a team of eight cyclists completed the coast-to-coast bike marathon called the Race Across America in record time. It was quite an achievement under any circumstances, but what made it extraordinary was something all eight of them had in common: Type 1 diabetes. Type 1, sometimes called juvenile diabetes, poses special challenges for athletes. A person with Type 1 can’t produce insulin and must take regular injections to control blood sugar. But exercise can also lead to precipitous, even deadly, drops in blood sugar. (Type 2 diabetes, by far the more common form of the disease, typically develops...

WASHINGTON: Harold Hamm Oklahoma Diabetes Center researchers have found a link between taking vitamin C with insulin and stopping blood vessel damage caused by type 1 diabetes. While neither therapy produced desired results when used alone, the combination of insulin to control blood sugar together with the use of Vitamin C, stopped blood vessel damage caused by the disease in patients with poor glucose control, said researchers. The findings appear this week in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. "We had tested this theory on research models, but this is the first time anyone has shown the therapy's effectiveness...

Enlarge ImageMystery disease. Scientists monitor a narcoleptic patient. Credit: Donna E. Natale Planas/Miami Herald/MCT/Newscom The millions of people who suffer from narcolepsy might have their immune system to blame. Researchers have tied the disabling sleep disorder to two immune system genes, suggesting that it's an autoimmune disease. The discovery may eventually lead to improved narcolepsy treatments. Narcolepsy affects 1 in every 2000 people, making it about as common as multiple sclerosis. The disorder encompasses an odd constellation of symptoms, including overwhelming daytime drowsiness, uncontrollable sleep attacks, and cataplexy, a sudden loss of muscle tone after an intense emotional outburst,...

Researchers have used injections of patients' own stem cells to reverse the course of type 1 diabetes, reports a research team from the University of São Paulo in Brazil and Northwestern University in Chicago. The findings, published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, exemplify the remarkable gains made by diabetes researchers, who are battling a continuously spreading disease that now affects nearly 8% of adults and children. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2008.) The research team, led by Dr. Julio Voltarelli of the University of Sao Paulo, is the first to successfully...

Human parechovirus is a harmless virus which is encountered by most infants and displays few symptoms. Suspected of triggering type 1 diabetes in susceptible people, research methods need to take this "silent" virus into consideration. This comes from findings in a study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. This study was part of a long-term project at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health to investigate if environmental risk factors affect type 1 diabetes. Faecal samples and questionnaires about the health of 102 children were sent in monthly by their parents for closer study. Researchers wanted to see how common...

Finnish scientists have reported a breakthrough in the attempts to understand the development of type 1 diabetes. They discovered disturbances in lipid and amino acid metabolism in children who later progressed to type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes. The alterations preceded the autoimmune response by months to years. The study may prompt new approaches for prediction and prevention of type 1 diabetes in pre-autoimmune phase of the disease. The results of the Finnish research team, which consists of scientists from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the Universities of Turku, Oulu and Tampere, have been published on...

Discovery offers further evidence of inflammation’s role in the disease; suggests new option for clinical testing Date: 10/13/2008 BIDMC Contact: Bonnie Prescott Phone: (617) 667-7306 Email: bprescot@bidmc.harvard.edu BOSTON – A protein made by the liver in response to inflammation and used to treat patients suffering from a genetic form of emphysema has been shown to restore blood glucose levels in a mouse model of Type 1 diabetes mellitus, according to a new study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). The findings, which appear in the Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of...

Michael Purdy Senior Medical Sciences Writer purdym@wustl.edu (314) 286-0122 Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis working with diabetic mice have examined in unprecedented detail the immune cells long thought to be responsible for type 1 diabetes. Researchers were able to examine the immune cells from isolated insulin-making structures in the pancreas known as the islets of Langerhans. They caught the immune cells, known as dendritic cells, "red-handed" carrying insulin and fragments of insulin-producing cells known as beta cells. This can be the first step toward starting a misdirected immune system attack that destroys the beta cells,...

Denver Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler has been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, his business manager Marty Garafalo confirmed Thursday night. The 25-year-old Cutler found out about two weeks ago that he was diabetic and needed daily insulin injections, Garafalo told The Associated Press. He said Cutler was managing his disease and "in no way is his football career jeopardized." Some 21 million Americans have diabetes, meaning their bodies cannot properly turn blood sugar into energy. Either they don't produce enough insulin or don't use it correctly. With the Type 1 form, the body's immune system attacks insulin-producing pancreatic cells, so...

One treatment for diabetes would be to promote the production of new insulin-making cells.MoodboardSome cells in the adult pancreas can, in times of extreme stress, produce new insulin-secreting cells, researchers have found. The findings, based on work performed in mice, open up a new approach to replacing insulin-secreting cells in patients with diabetes. They also address a raging controversy within the diabetes research community over whether such cells even exist. “It’s a big discovery,” says Emmanuel Baetge, chief scientific officer of Novocell, a stem cell company based in San Diego, California who was not involved with the work. “I think...

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Regenetech®, Inc. today announces that it has signed a Sponsored Research Agreement (SRA) with Johns Hopkins University in order to work toward a treatment for type 1 diabetes. This is in addition to the research agreements which the Company currently has in place with Texas A&M University and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Regenetech is pioneering the development and commercialization of technology which the company believes will enable regenerative therapy with adult stem cells for widespread use. Regenetech’s agreement with Johns Hopkins University will span over two years, and involves significant funding from the Company. The...

Although a number of unique diabetes treatments are already in the works, researchers at Johns Hopkins University are giving it a shot of their own with a newfangled intravascular implant. A team of undergrads have collaborated with doctors and biomedical engineers to develop a "specialized implant for a potential treatment of type I diabetes," which has been created for implantation inside the portal vein in order to dole out insulin when needed. The pouch would ideally be "impregnated with insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells," but researchers have insinuated that this same system could possibly be used to treat other ailments such...

In a discovery that has stunned even those behind it, scientists at a Toronto hospital say they have proof the body's nervous system helps trigger diabetes, opening the door to a potential near-cure of the disease that affects millions of Canadians. Diabetic mice became healthy virtually overnight after researchers injected a substance to counteract the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas. "I couldn't believe it," said Dr. Michael Salter, a pain expert at the Hospital for Sick Children and one of the scientists. "Mice with diabetes suddenly didn't have diabetes any more." The researchers caution they have yet...

Putting Up with Self Critics warned of bad experiments and false hope. But Denise Faustman seems to be right about a strategy to regrow insulin-making cells killed off in diabetes By Philip E. Ross Five years ago Denise Faustman stunned the biomedical world--and not in a good way, it seemed. She declared that she had cured diabetic mice by getting them to regrow their insulin-producing beta cells, a finding that, if it could be translated to humans, would spare the million-odd Americans with type 1 diabetes their daily needle pricking and insulin dosing. Since her announcement, the academic establishment has...

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 27 (HealthDay News) -- The latest study on islet cell transplantation has both good and bad news for people with type 1 diabetes. The good news is that nearly half of those who receive an islet cell transplant are insulin-free at one year after transplant; the bad news is that by the end of the second year that number drops to about one in seven. Still, researchers expect that with improvements in the technical aspects of the procedure, and better anti-rejection drugs, those numbers will improve. "A phenomenal amount of glycemic control can be provided with islet transplantation,"...

TORONTO, Dec. 5 /CNW/ - Transition Therapeutics Inc. ("Transition")(TSX: TTH), announces an update on the ongoing exploratory Phase IIa clinical studies of its lead diabetes regenerative therapy, E1-I.N.T.™ for type I and type II diabetes patients as well as blinded safety and efficacy data for the type I diabetes clinical study. The main objective of these studies is to identify well-tolerated and safe doses of E1-I.N.T.™ in diabetes patients, and signs of efficacy by measuring parameters including insulin usage and HbA1c levels. Preliminary data from the first four type I diabetes patients completing the 4 week treatment period (E1-I.N.T.™ or...

Seattle Times medical reporter Seattle researchers will soon begin testing a way to stave off diabetes by tripping up the immune system with the help of mouse cells. Scientists at the Pacific Northwest Research Institute (PNRI) will be part of a national effort to see if they can stop type 1 diabetes — or at least delay its progression — by derailing the immune cells that attack the body's insulin producers. The experimental therapy "has a reasonable shot at being the first building block toward a cure," said Dr. Bill Hagopian, director of PNRI's work on the therapy. In early...

Doctors may have found a way around a major obstacle in the effort to perfect transplants of islet cells, an experimental treatment for Type 1 diabetes, a severe form that often begins in childhood. Such transplants usually succeed only if islet cells from the pancreases of two or even three donors are used - a significant drawback, given the scarcity of donor organs. But now, in a trial of eight patients at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, doctors have managed successful transplants of islet cells, which are needed to produce insulin, with the pancreases of single donors. The use...

(CBS) There is new evidence that age matters when it comes to introducing cereal to the diet of a baby at risk from type 1 diabetes. Medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay explains on The Early Show that those with type 1 diabetes have the misfortune of their immune system attacking and destroying the cells in the body that produce insulin. The medical community does not fully understand what causes it. But, Senay explains, a baby is at risk if there's a family history or genetic susceptibility. Two new studies in the latest Journal of the American Medical Association show a...

Since age 13, Ellen Berty has had to worry about having food in her pocket -- just in case she was stuck somewhere and her blood sugar levels were precariously off-balance. Diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, Berty, 54, defied the odds of serious complications from diabetes until about three years ago. Without warning, she would fall into unconsciousness, her body suffering a severe hypoglycemic reaction. But the preschool educator from Arlington, Va., no longer worries about blackouts or emergency food supplies or, for that matter, the multiple daily injections of insulin that kept her alive for the past 40 years....