[ 2015-11-26 ]

Good news for diabetes patients
Blood therapy heralds end of insulin jabs for
diabetics

More than 300,000 people could benefit from the
new research

London (UK) - 26 November 2015 – The Times
- The daily trial of insulin injections could soon
be over for hundreds of thousands of people with
type-1 diabetes after a study suggested that a new
immune treatment was safe.

More than 300,000 people in Britain are thought to
have the condition, which is often diagnosed in
adolescence or early adulthood and leaves patients
struggling to regulate their blood sugar.

Scientists in California have developed a method
of cultivating billions of immune cells that
protect the body’s production of insulin, a
key hormone in the blood sugar cycle. These cells
can be safely infused back into patients and
restore insulin function for at least a year,
according to research findings.

In type-1 diabetes, the immune system turns on the
part of the pancreas that makes insulin. Most
current therapies use drugs to reduce the immune
response but this leaves the body susceptible to
infection. A team of researchers led by the
University of California, San Francisco, has
worked out how to use T-regulatory immune cells,
known colloquially as Tregs, to moderate the
attack on the pancreas.

Jeffrey Bluestone, who played a leading role in
the research, said the breakthrough could be a
“game-changer”. “For type-1
diabetes, we’ve traditionally given
immunosuppressive drugs, but this trial gives us a
new way forward,” he said. “By using
Tregs to re-educate the immune system, we may be
able to change the course of this disease.”

Writing in the journal Science Translational
Medicine, Professor Bluestone and colleagues said
the first clinical trial of the treatment,
involving 14 people, had been a success, with no
serious complications. It is now expected to be
tested on a greater number of patients.

The therapy, first described six years ago,
involves taking just under a pint of blood from
the patient and separating out between 2 and 4
million Tregs using fluorescence. The cells are
then multiplied 1,500-fold in a test tube and
restored to the bloodstream, where they appear to
survive for months. Up to a quarter of the new
Tregs were still circulating a year after the
infusion.

A similar sorting and cultivating technique could
be used to handle other autoimmune diseases, such
as rheumatoid arthritis, and may even prove to be
a valuable weapon against cardiovascular disease
and obesity. “Using a patient’s own
cells — identifying them, isolating them,
expanding them, and infusing them back — is
an exciting new pillar for drug
development,” Professor Bluestone said.

One of the patients in the trial, Mary Rooney, 39,
had been diagnosed with diabetes four years
earlier and said she had felt no side-effects from
the therapy.

“The work of Professor Bluestone and his
team offers new hope for people with type-1
diabetes,” she said. “The Treg
intervention aims to prevent the development and
progression of type-1 diabetes, freeing people
like me from the daily grind of insulin therapy
and lifelong fear of complications.”

Source - The Times(UK)

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