Six novel chromosomal regions identified by scientists leading a large, prospective study of children at risk for type 1 diabetes will enable the discovery of more genes that cause the disease and more targets for treating or even preventing it. The TEDDY study's international research team has identified the new gene regions in young people who have already developed type 1 diabetes or who have started making antibodies against their
Researchers with NIH’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) have devised an innovative biochemical formula of mineralized compounds that interacts in the bloodstream to regulate blood sugar for days at a time. In a proof-of-concept study performed with mice, the researchers showed that the biochemically formulated patch of dissolvable microneedles can respond to blood chemistry to manage glucose automatically. “This experimental approach could be a way to take
contributed by Richard (Rick) Mills Editor, Ahead of the Herd As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information. Paul Lacey was a researcher at Washington University when, in 1972, he cured some diabetic rats by transplanting the islet cells from healthy rats into diabetic ones. Over the next two decades researchers made many attempts to apply the procedure to humans.
A new research funding agreement between the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and Sernova, a clinical-stage regenerative medicine biotech, aims to address people with severe type 1 diabetes (T1D) who are hypoglycemia unaware, a condition in which a person with diabetes does not experience the usual early warning symptoms of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) following an insulin injection. The purpose of the funding is to advance human clinical trials of
Signaling a potential new approach to treating diabetes, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Harvard University have produced insulin-secreting cells from stem cells derived from patients with type 1 diabetes. People with this form of diabetes can’t make their own insulin and require regular insulin injections to control their blood sugar. The new discovery suggests a personalized treatment approach to diabetes may be on the
In type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks the body’s own insulin-producing cells. Scientists understand reasonably well how this autoimmune attack progresses, but they don’t understand what triggers the attack or how to stop it, says Stephan Kissler, Ph.D., Investigator in the Section on Immunobiology at Joslin Diabetes Center and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Mutations in dozens of genes raise the risk of the disease by
