Science Journal: Scientists back work on diabetes cure

[Celebration]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06083/676129.stm

When Denise Faustman announced that she had cured mice of diabetes, funders didn't exactly beat a path to her door, and colleagues didn't shower her with hosannas.

To the contrary. After her 2001 breakthrough, Dr. Faustman, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, couldn't interest drug companies or the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in supporting the bold next step she proposed: testing in people a version of what cured the mice.

When she published a similar study two years later, reaction from colleagues wasn't much better. Two fellow Harvard diabetes experts sent a letter to the New York Times, which had run an article describing Dr. Faustman's work, calling the claim that she was the first scientist to cure diabetes in mice "patently false." They also apologized to people with diabetes "on behalf of Dr. Faustman" for "having their expectations cruelly raised." JDRF, getting flak for not funding her, circulated the (unpublished) letter to show that the scientific verdict on her results was far from unanimous, explains spokesman William Ahearn.

But JDRF did approve grants to three competing teams, including one led by an author of the critical letter, to attempt to replicate Dr. Faustman's work. Now all three are announcing they have confirmed the aspect of her study that is the basis for a clinical trial planned at Harvard. By keeping the mice's immune system from destroying their insulin-making beta cells, the three report in Friday's issue of the journal Science, they got beta cells in some (but not all) of the animals essentially to come back from the dead, curing their diabetes

Denise Faustman has been supported by the Iacocca Foundation, and when more than a few donors complained that her work was not being supported by the JDRF and donated instead to the Iacocca Foundation, that is when the really nasty (unpublished) letter to the NYTimes was circulated by the JDRF. I think it backfired--for the same reason it wasn't published. See nasty sarcastic language above.

This group is still at it--spinning the results in a way that makes it sound as if the major part of her work was not confirmed. I am tired of copying and pasting but you can read it here--

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/jdc-isc032306.php

The spleen cell part of the study that enhanced the treatment was indeed not confirmed, but that wasn't the big news, though this tries to make it sound like it was.

For Dr. Faustman's take on the results from the three groups, if you are interested you can listen to the NPR interview.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5299793

I just wonder what it is like when these people all have to be in the same room together. Dr. Faustman has kept her cool, though, at least publically.

[Mythsaje]

1. When the news first hit,

and I heard the attack dogs revving up, I had a feeling that we'd hear more on the story. If she did succeed in this, the ramifications are incredible.

[MADem]

2. What is Iacocca's interest in this? A relative with the disease?

Himself? Anyone know?

[Celebration]

4. His first wife

Died of Type 1 diabetes. His autobiography contained quite a bit about their struggles with the disease.

[MADem]

5. Ah, makes sense. Tx for the info! n/t

[Kailassa]

3. How much money would curing it make for the drug companies?

They sell drugs, not cures, and anything that cures, for life, a common illness is going to deprive them of enormous amounts of revenue.

America's "health system" is not aimed at keeping people healthy, it is aimed at selling treatments. Healthy people do not buy treatments.

[SeveneightyWhoa]

6. Cures cost money too.

I assume there'll be a large market of diabetics willing to pay almost anything to be cured.

I'd sell my car and my left kidney to get rid of this godawful disease -- and I'll pay any pharmaceutical/biotech company that can give me the cure.

[Kailassa]

7. I sympathise. But you would not be paying the drug company.

This proceedure is medical or surgical, the drug companies would not see a cent for it.

The government will not help, because they are beholden to the drug companies, who would lose a lifetime of selling you insulen or other diabetes drugs.

[boise1]

8. Are Bush-onomics bad for U.S. diabetes research?

That’s more or less what the American Diabetes Association had to say to the Bush Administration this week. The organization released a statement criticizing proposed budget cuts that would severely hamper agencies trying to cure – or at least control the spread – of the disease. Among the proposed casualties are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and in particular, the CDC’s diabetes programs, which together stand to lose more than six percent of their total funding under the Bush plan. Coupled with the nearly flat funding proposed for the National Institutes of Health, ADA’s CEO Lynn B. Nicholas says the cuts are tantamount to "disengaging from the fight against diabetes.” That’s bad news to the approximately 213,000 diabetics who die every year from complications of the disease.

This latest speed bump in diabetes funding comes at a time when NIH is making some significant strides toward finding a cure for Type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes. In November, scientists at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) announced success in creating human islet-derived precursor cells (hIPCs) from pancreatic tissue. This could be an important step toward more successful and less risky treatments involving transplantation of insulin-producing islet cells into humans.

The funding failure is one of several obstacles that U.S. diabetes researchers are facing. Combined with ideological roadblocks in the area of stem cell research, many feel that the White House’s political agenda is seriously slowing the race for a diabetes cure.

Is anyone else concerned about politics getting in the way of scientific progress? Are other countries more supportive of their research communities? Canada has already led the way for developing a successful protocol for islet cell transplantation. In fact, they broke new ground this month by performing the first islet cell transplant using a living donor. The operation took place in Kyoto, and is likely to be replicated in Alberta long before the procedure is brought to the United States. Have the most promising diabetes research activities already moved offshore?

http://www.biopeer.com/biopeer/2005/02/are_bushonomics.html