Thank you very much to Jane, who sent me a link to the newly launched website Help Cure Childhood Diabetes (for those of us T1s who are longer in the tooth, fear not, they are talking T1 – but I gather they get more bang for their heartstring-pulling buck by talking about the kids). Jane’s daughter is one of the kids they’ve used as a case study – awesome work Rachel! Her page is here: http://www.helpcurechildhooddiabetes.org/Rachel.html.
I was previously unaware of the work of Dr Denise Faustman, who is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Immunobiology Laboratories of Massachusetts General Hospital. Her take on the cure for T1 diabetes is to find a way to eliminate the bad T cells which cause the auto-immune response which means those of us with T1 end up killing off our own pancreas cells, causing the onset of T1. More on her methodology here.
This work sounds outstanding – but to me it sounds like it’s more about stopping pre-diabetes in its tracks (i.e. prevention) rather than reversing out the diabetes of those of us who already have it fully blown (i.e. a cure). But that’s my interpretation of the research – anyone who wants to correct me please do! **
The best bit for me of the new website (aside from the lovely Rachel’s page) is the video on the home page. It’s not got the highest production values of all time (but I’m actually glad they’re not spending the money on videos, it’s all about the research) but it actually explains T1 diabetes better than most videos I’ve ever seen… the next person who asks me if I got diabetes because I ate too many sweets as a kid will most likely get a link to this video sent to them.
** EDIT – Just in case you don’t check out the comments box, I have been corrected re who this treatment is for- apparently it is focussed on those of us who have end stage diabetes after all, which makes it even more awesome. Comment pasted below:
I just wanted to clarify one thing that is very important. Dr. Faustman’s research is for people with established diabetes. The people in the clinical trials have had diabetes for many years. No one is new onset or pre-diabetic.
The mice in the earlier studies were referred to as “end-stage.” They would’ve died without insulin therapy. Most people who claim to cure these NOD mice are treating the mice before diabetes onset or right after the first elevated blood glucose. But Dr. Faustman’s work involved mice with long established insulin-dependent diabetes.
The exciting thing about this work is that it does address the underlying problem that causes type 1 diabetes in the first place. And like mice, it’s thought that peoples’ own pancreases will regenerate their beta cells after the autoimmune pressure is stopped. I saw an interesting observation by people who work at an organ bank in Florida. They discovered that the pancreases of old people who’d had type 1 diabetes for decades still had beta cells. There were were poorly organized, but they were present.
It now appears that there are many processes our bodies use to repair the pancreas and regenerate beta cells. Once the faulty T cells that cause type 1 diabetes are removed, there’s hope that in many cases, people will be able to produce their own insulin. There are other methods to help this along, like people working on peptides that encourage beta cell growth.
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Rella wrote
Hello,
Jane told me that she’d sent you the link to our new website. Thanks for posting about it.
I just wanted to clarify one thing that is very important. Dr. Faustman’s research is for people with established diabetes. The people in the clinical trials have had diabetes for many years. No one is new onset or pre-diabetic.
The mice in the earlier studies were referred to as “end-stage.” They would’ve died without insulin therapy. Most people who claim to cure these NOD mice are treating the mice before diabetes onset or right after the first elevated blood glucose. But Dr. Faustman’s work involved mice with long established insulin-dependent diabetes.
The exciting thing about this work is that it does address the underlying problem that causes type 1 diabetes in the first place. And like mice, it’s thought that peoples’ own pancreases will regenerate their beta cells after the autoimmune pressure is stopped. I saw an interesting observation by people who work at an organ bank in Florida. They discovered that the pancreases of old people who’d had type 1 diabetes for decades still had beta cells. There were were poorly organized, but they were present.
It now appears that there are many processes our bodies use to repair the pancreas and regenerate beta cells. Once the faulty T cells that cause type 1 diabetes are removed, there’s hope that in many cases, people will be able to produce their own insulin. There are other methods to help this along, like people working on peptides that encourage beta cell growth.
Bernard Farrell wrote
I was with David and Elizabeth Edelman of DiabetesDaily.com when they recorded this conversation with Dr. Faustman. I think you’ll find it interesting.
Afterward she took us on a tour of the lab. There’s a lot of scientists analyzing blood samples that have been separated with custom machinery developed by the lab, they’re looking at the extremely small T-cell samples that come in each blood sample. I’ve met with Dr. Faustman several times and I’ve found that she believes fully this approach will work. I’ve been raising funds for several years to support her research.
I’ve had type 1 diabetes for over 37 years, so part of the reason I’m working so hard on fund raising is selfish.
You may be interested in my diabetes search engine. It helps answer questions about diabetes, and I donate any advertising revenue to her research. It’s only about $200 to date, but it all adds up.
debs wrote
I am proud to say that some of the photos on the homepage and in the video are courtesy of my husband and son. Hubby is a photographer and even tho you can’t see Tyler’s face, we know it’s him!
Hope it achieves what it is intended to!