FW: Chicago Tribune Listing - Take a look! sent from Rob

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From: glafrance@...

Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2011 1:05 AM

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Subject: Chicago Tribune Listing - Take a look! sent from Rob

Rob recommends this article to you!

This is why he recommends the article to you. Interesting

Is BCG a cure for diabetes? The long road to acceptance

from the Chicago Tribune

The first trial in a handful of humans has suggested that injecting patients

with Type 1 diabetes with an inexpensive vaccine normally used to prevent

tuberculosis can

<http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-bcg-diabetes-20110625,0,6341862.story>

block destruction of insulin-secreting pancreatic cells in humans and allow

regeneration of the pancreas. Such a finding, if confirmed and expanded on,

could lay the foundation for freeing the estimated 1 million U.S. Type 1

diabetics from their daily insulin shots. It brings up a word that is rarely

or never used in considering the disease: " cure. " Such an outcome is still a

long way in the future, but Dr. Faustman of Massachusetts General

Hospital has already come a long way in her quest to find a new treatment

paradigm for diabetes.

Researchers have always assumed that insulin-secreting cells could never be

regenerated. Once they are gone, they are gone forever, the theory held.

Scientists have thus focused on ways to prevent their loss -- such as by

developing vaccines that will halt the immune system's attack on the

pancreas before all the cells are destroyed -- or by transplanting

replacement cells from a donor. The first approach has not yet shown much

success, and the second has provided only limited benefits.

Insulin-secreting cells for transplants are difficult to obtain in quantity,

provoke a strong immune response and require immunosuppressive drugs. They

can " cure " diabetes, freeing patients from their insulin secretions, but the

benefits often disappear with time.

Faustman started out as a transplanter, learning her technique from Dr.

Lacey of Washington University of St. Louis, a pioneer in the field. When

she came to Mass General in 1985, she was confident that she could do the

transplants better than other researchers and that her attempts would

succeed. For one of the few times in her life, however, it turned out that

she was wrong.

She decided to go back into the lab and attempt to figure out why the

transplants were failing. Most researchers had studied transplants in mice

in which the pancreas was artificially destroyed. Faustman decided to look

at mice that, like humans, had a strong propensity to develop diabetes

naturally. She found that the transplants failed in those animals just like

they had in her human trials, and she eventually determined that the

rodents' immune systems were attacking the transplanted cells just like they

had their own pancreases.

Eventually, she developed a two-pronged attack. First she injected the mice

with Freund's Complete Adjuvant, a mixture of water, oil and parts of dead

bacteria that is sometimes used to increase the power of vaccines. The

adjuvant overstimulated the immune cells that were attacking the pancreas,

causing them to self-destruct. She also injected the rodents with BCG, known

formally as bacillus Calmette-Guerin, which has been used for 80 years as a

preventive for tuberculosis. It stimulated the production of another immune

component, called tumor necrosis factor or TNF, that kills the cells that

were attacking the pancreas.

Faustman's goal was simply to prevent the attack on islet cells of the

pancreas so that a new transplant could have a chance to take hold. To her

great surprise, however, the treated mice began producing insulin again -- a

finding that contradicted everything researchers believed about diabetes.

Eventually, however, other labs were able to replicate her results.

In subsequent papers, Faustman showed that the new insulin-secreting cells

were being produced by the spleen, a fist-sized organ that plays a crucial

role in recycling blood cells. First, she demonstrated that the cure of the

mice could be accelerated by injecting extra spleen cells into the animals.

Then she transplanted male spleens into female mice undergoing the treatment

and demonstrated that the insulin-producing cells were male in origin.

Very little research has been conducted in humans about what happens to

patients after their spleens have been removed for medical reasons. But

Faustman found two studies, one of British patients with pancreatitis and

one of children with beta-thalassemia, in which their spleens had been

removed. In both groups, many of the patients developed diabetes within five

years after their surgery. These findings suggest that the spleen plays a

key role in regulating glucose uptake.

Faustman had great difficulty obtaining research funds because her ideas

were so contrary to the prevailing wisdom. One person who believed in her,

however, was Lee A. Iacocca, the former chief of Chrysler Corp., whose wife

died of diabetes. Iacocca wrote her a check for $1 million and by 2006,

his Iacocca Family Foundation had raised more than $11 million for her

research.

She is now gearing up for a larger, phase 2 clinical trial of the technique.

More information about her research can be obtained here

<http://www.faustmanlab.org> and those interested in participating in the

trials can e-mail her at diabetestrial@.... But be warned there is

already a long waiting list.

Click here to view this article <http://tribwww.gumiyo.com/k/XJdqgFG>