Pig cells can cure diabetes
Published: February 20, 2006
While many consider pigs a cure for hunger, they could also harbor the key to curing Type 1 diabetes, say researchers at the University of Minnesota.
“It is clearly not a definitive study. But it is a promising study,” says Dr. Bernhard Hering of the University’s Diabetes Institute for Immunology and Transplantation.
Dr. Hering’s research, to be published this week in the journal Nature Medicine, found that 12 diabetic monkeys recovered from diabetes after receiving islet cells from pigs.
“We have now achieved prolonged reversal of diabetes after pig islet transplantation in monkeys. One step away from humans.”
Islets are the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, which regulates glucose in the human body. Diabetes attacks islets, which leads to blood sugar abnormalities and eventually threatens other organs in the body.
“Everyday, you can not spend one day in medical practice anywhere without facing problems relating to diabetes, ” remarked Dr. Hering.
The monkeys in the study all showed improvement in glucose levels and the amount of insulin needed over the first 180 days, which was the term of the study, “All the animals that have received pig islet transplants became insulin independent, and had much improved blood sugar control after transplantation.”
And what’s also intriguing is that the pigs used in the study were not altered, “Pig islet transplant survival was possible without genetic engineering of donor pigs, without coating or encapsulation of transplanted islets.”
Years of additional testing will be needed to confirm the results to the satisfaction of regulators, and to develop a supply of disease-free pigs. But that supply of pig islet cells could easily exceed the supply of human islet cells currently available.
As Dr. Hering put it, “We can do one to two thousand human islet transplants a year in the United States and we have 30,000 new cases of Type 1 diabetes. We currently have one to two million people with Type 1 Diabetes.”
The U of M is working on the problem along several parallel tracks, setting up protocol for testing of pig islets in humans and looking for ways to cut down on the side effects of anti-rejection immunosuppressive drugs.
The research has been supported by a private foundation known as the Spring Point Project, which plans to develop facilities to produce disease-free pigs. As Dr. Hering explained it, “Spring Point Project, a nonprofit organization, builds and operates so-called bio-secure barrier facilities to raise pigs, high-health pigs that meet all the FDA federal regulations for planned pig islet transplant trials.”
The U of M has pioneered the field of transplantation related to diabetes, performing the first pancreas transplant in 1966, the first human islet transplant 1974 and the first live-donor segmented pancreas transplant in 1979.
The U renewed its islet transplant focus in the year 2000 taking advantage of technological advancements in the transplant field, but even that procedure is still classified as research. The U’s goal is to get FDA approval of human islet transplantation as clinical care, which would put it in the category of medical practice.
The U’s had good results with human-to-human islet transplants, a 20-minute “infusion” procedure in which the clusters of islet cells culled from a deceased person’s pancreas are placed into a patient using needles and tubes. It’s far less invasive than a pancreas transplant. And, according to Dr. Hering’s research, it shows a lot of promise, “Success rate in terms of reversing diabetes, restoring insulin independence and normal blood sugar control is more than 90 percent.”
Assuming the FDA will eventually be satisfied with islet transplant, researchers such as Dr. Hering are looking for ways to create a reliable and plentiful supply of islet cells. Using stem cells to create islet cells is one path of research, but harvesting pig cells is one that is closer to reality in Dr. Hering’s mind.
“We think this is very promising, ” Hering told KARE-TV Sunday, “We also understand a lot of research needs to be done to make to make this type of therapy safer. In particular we have to improve immunosuppressive medication, but we believe this research and the results that are presented in the Nature Medicine article clearly indicate a critical milestone has been met in our ability to develop islet replacement therapies based on pig islets.”
Dr Hering believes this research may also help some of the 20 million Americans with Type 2 adult-onset diabetes, “I’m honored to be involved in such high impact research, which holds promise for so many diabetics.”
He noted that pigs are already playing important roles in medicine, being used as a supply of replacement heart valves and insulin, just to name a couple.
As to the age-old question about recipients taking on their donors’ traits, Dr. Hering said the 12 monkeys in the study had not become pig-like in any sense of the word, “They have maintained their identity and have functioned and behaved more as monkeys than as pigs.”
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