Is a diabetes cure really on the way?

The headlines were really quite dramatic.  There was, they proclaimed, a cure for diabetes on the way.  And there had indeed been a significant breakthrough in stem cell research.

Scientists at Harvard University were able to create insulin-producing beta cells in large quantities. But a cure?  Certainly not an imminent one.  It was research that could lead the way to transplantation into humans in a few years with various provisos.

Nevertheless, it is the latest in a number of developments that have led scientists in the field of type 1 diabetes research to be cautiously optimistic.

These include the testing of an aritificial pancreas – this would pump the exact amount of insulin to the body, exactly when it’s needed.

There is the stem cell research – and also encapsulation – a method of surrounding those cells so the immune system doesn’t attack them.

And early next year Professor Mark Peakman, of Kings College, London, and the Guy’s Bio-Medical Research Centre,  will begin a trial of a drug designed to re-balance the immune system to stop it attacking the beta cells – the cells that store and release the insulin.

Prof Peakman sees his research and the other recent developments as part of a jigsaw – that still needs assembling. For instance,  the stem cells are still at risk of being attacked by the body’s immune system.

But Prof Peakman’s peptide immune-therapy, in which fragments of beta cells (the cells that produce the insulin) are put into the person at risk of diabetes, would rebalance the immune system.

Without a doubt,  all this research is important.  More than 400,000 people in the UK have type 1 diabetes – 29,000 of them are children.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) is currently funding Prof Peakman’s research and 54 other clinical trials.

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