KUSI News anchor Brad Perry interviews Duc Dong, Ph.D. and Joseph Lancman, Ph.D of Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla on ground breaking research regarding type 1 diabetes. Click here to learn more about the project and help support their research today: Replacement Beta-Cells From An Unexpected Source.
Dr. Steven Ruderman is an illustrious figure in the world of medicine, notably in the field of Diabetes. Throughout his career, Ruderman has consistently demonstrated exemplary dedication and ingenuity, leading to several noteworthy achievements in his domain.
In the realm of Diabetes , Dr. Ruderman’s contributions have been transformative. He has pioneered numerous procedures and treatments that have greatly improved patient outcomes. But what about KUSI Good Morning San Diego? How does this local show tie into the story?
KUSI Good Morning San Diego is more than just a local news outlet—it’s an institution. A stalwart in the community, it has consistently provided reliable news, engaging features, and in-depth interviews, much like the one with Dr. Ruderman.
The influence of KUSI Good Morning San Diego extends beyond morning news, as it serves as a platform for significant dialogues that can impact the community and beyond.
Dr. Ruderman’s interview was much anticipated, not just because of his standing in the medical community, but also due to the important health topics he was expected to address.
In the interview, Dr. Ruderman discussed a range of issues, from recent medical advancements to his vision for the future of healthcare. His insights were enlightening, revealing a deep commitment to improving patient care.
The interview sparked a lively dialogue among viewers and the broader medical community. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, highlighting the value of such comprehensive discussions.
Dr. Ruderman’s interview offered vital insights into health and wellness. His perspective on preventative care, in particular, struck a chord with many viewers.
The future of medicine, as envisioned by Dr. Ruderman, was another key takeaway from the interview. His predictions about advancements in patient care and the role of technology in medicine left viewers and professionals intrigued and hopeful.
Dr. Steven Ruderman’s interview on KUSI Good Morning San Diego was more than just an engaging segment—it was an enriching and enlightening experience. His insights into the future of medicine, coupled with his unique perspective on healthcare, make this interview a must-watch for all interested in the medical field.
On Diabetes Alert Day, March 22nd, KUSI’s Good Morning San Diego anchor, Lisa Remillard, interviewed Dr. Steven Ruderman, of Ximed Medical Group, and good friend to Diabetes Research Connection (DRC). A team of researchers, led by investigators at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, have identified a new class of antigens that may be a contributing factor to type 1 diabetes, according to an article published in the current issue of the journal Science.
Click Here To Watch Interview
Original article published by EurekAlert! American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on March 14, 2016. Click here to read the original article.
This new ‘smart cell patch’ developed at UNC and NC State is a proof of principle to treat millions of people with type-1 and advanced type-2 diabetes
Now, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University have devised another option: a synthetic patch filled with natural beta cells that can secrete doses of insulin to control blood sugar levels on demand with no risk of inducing hypoglycemia.
The proof-of-concept builds on an innovative technology, the “smart insulin patch,” reported last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Both patches are thin polymeric squares about the size of a quarter and covered in tiny needles, like a miniature bed of nails. But whereas the former approach filled these needles with manmade bubbles of insulin, this new “smart cell patch” integrates the needles with live beta cells.
Tests of this painless patch in small animal models of type-1 diabetes demonstrated that it could quickly respond to skyrocketing blood sugar levels and significantly lower them for 10 hours at a time. The results were published in Advanced Materials.
“This study provides a potential solution for the tough problem of rejection, which has long plagued studies on pancreatic cell transplants for diabetes,” said senior author Zhen Gu, PhD, assistant professor in the joint UNC/NC State department of biomedical engineering. “Plus it demonstrates that we can build a bridge between the physiological signals within the body and these therapeutic cells outside the body to keep glucose levels under control.”
Beta cells typically reside in the pancreas, where they act as the body’s natural insulin-producing factories. In healthy people, they produce, store, and release the hormone insulin to help process sugar that builds up in the bloodstream after a meal. But in people with diabetes, these cells are either damaged or unable to produce enough insulin to keep blood sugar levels under control.
Diabetes affects more than 387 million people worldwide, and that number is expected to grow to 500 million by the year 2030. Patients with type-1 and advanced type-2 diabetes must regularly monitor their blood sugar levels and inject themselves with varying amounts of insulin, a process that is painful and imprecise. Injecting the wrong amount of medication can lead to significant complications like blindness and limb amputations, or even more disastrous consequences such as diabetic comas and death.
Since the 1970s, researchers have researched transplantation of insulin-producing cells as an alternative treatment for diabetes. The first successful transplant of human beta cells was performed in 1990, and since then hundreds of diabetic patients have undergone the procedure. Yet, only a fraction of treated patients achieved normal blood sugar levels. Most transplants are rejected, and many of the medications used to suppress the immune system wind up interfering with the activity of beta cells and insulin. More recently, researchers have been experimenting with ways to encapsulate beta cells into biocompatible polymeric cells that could be implanted in the body.
Gu, who also holds appointments in the UNC School of Medicine, the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, and the UNC Diabetes Care Center, decided to create a device that would put the blood-sugar buffering properties of beta cells out of reach of the patient’s immune system. Lead author Yanqi Ye, a graduate student in Gu’s lab, constructed the “smart cell patches” using natural materials commonly found in cosmetics and diagnostics. She stuffed the hundreds of microneedles, each about the size of an eyelash, with culture media and thousands of beta cells that were encapsulated into microcapsules made from biocompatible alginate. When applied to the skin, the patch’s microneedles poked into the capillaries and blood vessels, forming a connection between the internal environment and the external cells of the patch.
Ye also created “glucose-signal amplifiers,” which are synthetic nanovesicles filled with three chemicals to make sure the beta cells could “hear” the call from rising blood sugar levels and respond accordingly.
Gu’s group showed that blood sugar levels in diabetic mice quickly declined to normal levels. To assess whether the patch could regulate blood sugar without lowering it too much, the researchers administered a second patch to the mice. As they had hoped, repeated administration of the patch did not result in excess doses of insulin, and thus did not risk hypoglycemia. Instead, the second patch extended the life of the treatment to 20 hours.
Further modifications, pre-clinical tests, and eventually clinical trials in humans will all be necessary before the patch can become a viable option for patients. But for now, the researchers believe their results provide a proof of principle for an alternative approach that could be safer and less cumbersome than current treatments.
“Managing diabetes is tough for patients because they have to think about it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the rest of their lives,” said co-author John Buse, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at the UNC School of Medicine and director of the UNC Diabetes Care Center and the NC Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute. “These smart insulin approaches are exciting because they hold the promise of giving patients some time off with regards to their diabetes self-care. It would not be a cure but a desperately needed vacation.”
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The research was funded by grants from NC TraCS, home of the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award at UNC, the American Diabetes Association, and the National Science Foundation through the ASSIST Engineering Center at NC State.
Study co-authors from UNC were Jicheng Yu, Chao Wang, Nhu-Y Nguyen, and Glenn M. Walker.
Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.
Original article written by German Research For Environmental Health on March 15, 2016. Click here to read the original article.
Neuherberg, March 15, 2016. A team of scientists at Helmholtz Zentrum München, in collaboration with Technische Universität München and the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), have shown in a preclinical model that specifically modified insulin mimetopes may lead to an immune tolerance. The results, published in ‘Nature Communications’, may be a step to improved prevention of type 1 diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes affects 30,000 individuals throughout Germany and is the most common metabolic disease in children and adolescents. To halt the ever-increasing incidence, the young investigator group “Immunological Tolerance in Type 1 Diabetes” at the Institute of Diabetes Research directed by Prof. Dr. Anette-Gabriele Ziegler is exploring new strategies to prevent the onset of the disease.
In the current study, the scientists investigated the effect of specifically modified insulin mimetopes on the immune system.* “In particular, we wanted to find out whether we can induce the protective regulatory T cells to produce a tolerance of the body against insulin, if we bring them into contact with our novel peptides,” said Dr. Carolin Daniel, who leads a young investigator group and directs the study.
Optimized mimetopes curb the immune system
The study is based on findings Daniel made several years ago at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston. There she showed that insulin mimetopes she optimized were significantly more efficient in inducing a tolerance through regulatory T cells towards insulin than their natural counterparts (epitopes). In young mice, the induction of insulin mimetopes at low doses completely halted the development of type 1 diabetes.
The next step was achieved in the study that has just been published: In a so-called humanized mouse model, whose immune system is very similar to that of humans, the scientists were able to confirm the results** – an important indication for the effectiveness of the optimized human insulin mimetopes.“In fact, we were able to show that the new vaccine efficiently stimulates the regulatory T cells, which then can impede the attack of the immune system on the insulin-producing cells,” said lead author Isabelle Serr, who was involved in the study within the framework of her dissertation.
In the long term Daniel and her group want to further develop the method for preventive treatment of children at high risk for type 1 diabetes. “An important step will be to test the new therapy clinically – that is our vision“, said Daniel with regard to the future.
Original publication::
Serr, I. et al. (2016). Type 1 diabetes vaccine candidates promote human Foxp3+Treg induction in humanized mice, Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10991
Link: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160315/ncomms10991/full/ncomms10991.html
As German Research Center for Environmental Health, Helmholtz Zentrum München pursues the goal of developing personalized medical approaches for the prevention and therapy of major common diseases such as diabetes mellitus and lung diseases. To achieve this, it investigates the interaction of genetics, environmental factors and lifestyle. The Helmholtz Zentrum München has about 2,300 staff members and is headquartered in Neuherberg in the north of Munich. Helmholtz Zentrum München is a member of the Helmholtz Association, a community of 18 scientific-technical and medical-biological research centers with a total of about 37,000 staff members. www.helmholtz-muenchen.de/en/index.html
Technical University of Munich (TUM) is one of Europe’s leading research universities, with more than 500 professors, around 10,000 academic and non-academic staff, and 39,000 students. Its focus areas are the engineering sciences, natural sciences, life sciences and medicine, reinforced by schools of management and education. TUM acts as an entrepreneurial university that promotes talents and creates value for society. In that it profits from having strong partners in science and industry. It is represented worldwide with a campus in Singapore as well as offices in Beijing, Brussels, Cairo, Mumbai, San Francisco, and São Paulo. Nobel Prize winners and inventors such as Rudolf Diesel, Carl von Linde, and Rudolf Mößbauer have done research at TUM. In 2006 and 2012 it won recognition as a German “Excellence University.” In international rankings, TUM regularly places among the best universities in Germany. www.tum.de/en/homepage
The Institute of Diabetes Research (IDF) focuses on the pathogenesis and prevention of type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes as a long-term effect of gestational diabetes. A top-priority project is the development of an insulin vaccination against type 1 diabetes. In large-scale, long-term studies the IDF examines the implication of genes, environmental factors and the immune system in the pathogenesis of type 1 diabetes. Using data from the BABYDIAB cohort, which was established in 1989 as the world’s first prospective diabetes birth cohort, risk genes and antibody profiles can both be identified. This allows predictions about the development and onset of type 1 diabetes and will change the classification and the time of diagnosis. The IDF is part of the Helmholtz Diabetes Center (HDC). www.helmholtz-muenchen.de/en/idf/index.html
The German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD) is a national association that brings together experts in the field of diabetes research and combines basic research, translational research, epidemiology and clinical applications. The aim is to develop novel strategies for personalized prevention and treatment of diabetes. Members are Helmholtz Zentrum München – German Research Center for Environmental Health, the German Diabetes Center in Düsseldorf, the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Potsdam-Rehbrücke, the Paul Langerhans Institute Dresden of the Helmholtz Zentrum München at the University Medical Center Carl Gustav Carus of the TU Dresden and the Institute for Diabetes Research and Metabolic Diseases of the Helmholtz Zentrum München at the Eberhard-Karls-University of Tuebingen together with associated partners at the Universities in Heidelberg, Cologne, Leipzig, Lübeck and Munich. www.dzd-ev.de/en/index.html
Scientific contact:
Dr. Carolin Daniel, German Research Center for Environmental Health (GmbH), Institute of Diabetes Research, young investigator group „Immunological Tolerance in Type 1 Diabetes“, Ingolstädter Landstr. 1, 85764 Neuherberg – Tel. +49 89 3187 2188 – carolin.daniel@helmholtz-muenchen.de
Original article written by Cantú-Rodríguez OG, et al. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2016;doi:10.1210/jc.2015-2776 on February 23, 2016. Click here to read the original article.
In patients with type 1 diabetes, simplified autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in an outpatient setting appears to be a safe and effective intervention, according to study data.
Fernando LavalleGonzález, MD, an endocrinologist at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León in Mexico, and colleagues evaluated 16 children (median age, 12 years) with type 1 diabetes to determine the effect of simplified autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in the outpatient setting on long-term insulin independence, changes in HbA1c and the safety of the procedure. The median follow-up was 34 months.
All patients underwent the procedure on a 100% outpatient basis without severe complications, and there was no mortality at 100 days of follow-up.
The overall response was 81%, with a reduction in overall daily insulin requirements from 0.41 U/kg to 0.32 U/kg by the third month (P = .46). Insulin dependence was achieved by seven participants (44%); five were insulin-independent by the third month and one attained freedom from insulin within the first week after transplantation. Two participants who achieved partial insulin independence at 6 months post-procedure achieved complete insulin independence at 11 months and 1 year post-transplant. Three patients were deemed non-responders, and the remaining six showed partial insulin independence. In all groups, HbA1c levels demonstrated a total mean decrease of 0.87% during the 3 months of study, a 1% decrease at 6 months and 1.6% decrease at the last follow-up. At 6 months, the insulin-independent group exhibited a mean HbA1c reduction of –2.3%.
“The transplant was fully accomplished on an outpatient basis, thereby reducing costs, limiting exposure to nosocomial infections and avoiding the inconvenience of hospitalization,” the researchers wrote. “This method should be further studied in a larger cohort including an appropriate contemporary control group as it appears to be capable of changing the natural history of type 1 diabetes mellitus.” – by Jennifer Byrne
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
An event supporting research to cure T1D.