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Biotech Medicine

CNBC: 'Stem Cells May Finally Offer a Cure for Type 1 Diabetes' (cnbc.com) 60

Posted by EditorDavid from the revealing-research dept.
On Saturday CNBC published a remarkable headline. "Stem cells may finally offer a cure for Type 1 diabetes." There are 537 million people around the world living with diabetes. And that number is growing.... But over the past 20 years, significant advancements in stem cell research and therapies have revealed promising methods of creating new insulin-making cells, which are needed to cure Type 1 diabetes. Biotech company Vertex Pharmaceuticals recently began a clinical trial where it plans to treat 17 participants who have Type 1 diabetes with new insulin-making cells derived from stem cells. The first patient in the trial, Brian Shelton, has had positive results. After 150 days, Shelton was able to reduce the amount of insulin he injects by 92%.

Other global companies are also working to cure diabetes, such as ViaCyte, CRISPR, and Novo Nordisk, one of the biggest insulin manufacturers in the world.
In CNBC's 20-minute video, a VP/disease area executive from Vertex Pharmaceuticals explains that diabetes is "one of the few diseases where a single cell type is destroyed or missing" — the pancreas cell that produces insulin. So they're exploring "the idea that if you could create those cells and replace them, you can really address the underlying causal biology of the disease directly."

CNBC also spoke to Brian Shelton, the trial's first patient, who's been a Type 1 diabetic for 44 years, and whose pancreas suddenly started producing insulin again. "Now my body does it all on its own," Shelton says. The news was especially surprising, CNBC reports, because "as the first person in the trial, Shelton received only half of the anticipated dose to ensure it was safe."

One researcher they spoke to even predicts that biological solutions will compete with "ongoing efforts to use nanotechnology to miniaturize all the hardware necessary to do this," and that within the next 3 to 5 years patients will finally have the option of "something that is really Cadillac." And Aaron Kowalski, CEO of the nonprofit Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, tells CNBC, "I am fully convinced that I will walk away from my insulin pump and continuous glucose monitor in my lifetime, and I would be disappointed if it wasn't in this decade."

CNBC's report concludes, "For diabetics who want a cure that requires no additional treatment, it may no longer be a question of if, but a matter of when."
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CNBC: 'Stem Cells May Finally Offer a Cure for Type 1 Diabetes' More

CNBC: 'Stem Cells May Finally Offer a Cure for Type 1 Diabetes'

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  • Who always rants about the internet having become an unusable cesspool will finally have a relevant article to comment on! I agree with the sentiment though. Imagine how much junk we'd all be avoiding if Gopher was the main protocol in use today
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Pretty weak FP, but I guess you should be thanked for blocking out SP?

      On the story itself, I was exaggerating (for Subjective effect) to compare tiddly winks to diabetes, but my main concern is that the same technologies can also be used for malicious purposes. Knowing how to cure is strongly related to knowing how to sicken. And entropy tends to favor the dark-side applications...

      • Pretty weak FP, but I guess you should be thanked for blocking out SP?

        On the story itself, I was exaggerating (for Subjective effect) to compare tiddly winks to diabetes, but my main concern is that the same technologies can also be used for malicious purposes. Knowing how to cure is strongly related to knowing how to sicken. And entropy tends to favor the dark-side applications...

        Cynical old me notes that if you are in the USA, the treatment will probably not ever be approved - There is simply too much profit to be made from the traditional diabetes treatments - a cure would be doing a terrible disservice to the shareholders.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by beernutz ( 16190 )
      I think maybe you are posting on the wrong story? Did you mean to post on the "The Plain-Text Interenet is Coming"?

  • will finally have the option of "something that is really Cadillac.

    I don't think that phrase means what you think it means. Not only that, I'm not sure a majority people today would even know what that reference means.

    • For those outside the US perhaps. A Cadillac is a premium luxury vehicle. They are large and inefficient but are extremely comfortable and smooth on the road, the handling is poor but fluid like driving a boat. They were the first or among the first to offer most of the top end luxury model features found in cars today... all those tiny bells and windows like the heated seats, personal climate control, individual seat adjustment... that sort of thing.

      .

  • But just how much money will each patient require to have to get this treatment?

    • Not that important. Diabetes is a cash cow for companies. Originally insulin was hard to make, so they let it get expensive. Now insulin is cheap to make but patents keep it expensive. Literally thousands of dollars a year to keep you alive.

      An insurance company would easily $50k for this procedure and be happy.

      Moreover, it is unlikely to cost more than $50k. The injection itself should be cheap, only expensive to make the cells.

      • Patents only make it expensive if you insist on using fancy insulin analogs (admittedly - it does make diabetes easier to manage). You can use the generic off patent stuff just fine. But if pharma companies couldn't charge more for the analogs, they probably would never have been developed in the first place.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          That doesn't really track. Insulin, including the analogs has risen MUCH faster than inflation. That is, the old prices were enough to incentivise development and so a cost today that tracked inflation would also be able to do so.

          They are not charging what they are today because that's what it cost to incentivise them, they are charging what they do now because they can get away with it, at least in part because the market is broken.

    • In Canada? Probably free. In the US? 10k sound fair? Make it 20k... since I think tylenol costs 100 bucks in an American hospital

    • Every time any tech comes out there are fools like you emerging to try to ban it under the premise it will only be for the rich. Do you even realize every tech you use that is today cheap was exclusively for the rich at some point?

  • If there's no mention of progress on the immunosuppressants needed to ensure that the beta cells don't get destroyed by the immune system - which is the reason you get Type I diabetes in the first place, so using your own stem cells doesn't help with rejection - the article is just a fluff piece for this company.
    • Not always... My wife became T1D at age 36 because of a bad case of pancreatitis (her pancreas digested part of itself, including her beta cells). Not an autoimmune issue in her case...

    • Encapsulated beta cells or tolerizing vaccines can solve that part. Many companies such as Sernova and ViaCyte has encapsulated beta cells in clinical trials already.

      • From what I've read [nature.com], all of those approaches are still at the stage of, "Well, it sort of works, except for this one major remaining problem..."

        • Where in that article did it say there is a major remaining problem? They are in clinical trials and in fact both ViaCyte and Sernova are reporting some great preliminary results from the clinical trial which is ongoing. Reference: https://sernova.com/press/rele... [sernova.com] Anyway, let's assume what you say is true (which it isn't, given the preceding link but I digress) .. we should give up? Not even try to figure out the remaining problems? Humans should have given up on building flying machines 1000 years ago

          • The article says: In ViaCyte's first trial, the encapsulation was smothered by immune cells. In their latest completed trials, they had to use immunosuppressants because immune cells were getting in and killing the beta cells. Hopefully the latest trials from ViaCyte and Sernova end up going as well as they claim to be going so far, but I'm not going to break out the champagne until they actually complete a trial without finding problems.
  • but here's a good video explaining why the bible does not prohibit abortion. [youtube.com]

    I say slightly, because we are massively behind on stem cell research because of politics. The sooner folks realize that's all bullshit the sooner we can get our asses in gear.

    And that's before we talk about the questionable foundations [history.com] of modern [springer.com] medicine [bbc.com]

  • The people who also refuse vaccines will also refuse this and try to cancel it while bitching about being cancelled.

    • People who don't trust modern medicine are Darwin working as intended.

      • Are you suggesting that we should not have been skeptical of Theranos? Or that the Ethiopian women, Jewish refugees claiming the "right of return" to enter Israel, should not have been suspicious of the birth control they were given?

        https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]

        Or that even more pregnant women should have been confident about their doctor prescribing the new Thalidomide medication?

        https://www.thalidomidetrust.o... [thalidomidetrust.org].

        All medicine should be treated with some skepticism, or far more dangerous mistakes will h

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • I do think it works, and I am vaccinated myself. I spend the time to read up on new medications. I was concerned in particular about the early approval process, and less concerned when it was effectively beta tested on thousands of other people.

            Blind faith in any claim is dangerous: the scientific process is dependent on validation of claims, and I encourage this.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

            Wow... to miss the point that much and put up a strawman of that calibre...

          • How did you jump to asking questions about vaccines suddenly ?

            This is exactly how superstitious people try to justify that their 'beliefs' are some infallible universal truths or told by some higher power who can never be wrong by definition!

            Everyone has a right to question CDC or WHO or any agency. If they fail to explain it properly to an average citizen then it's problem with their communication or their data.

            Otherwise why would there be hundreds of other things on which no one questions them ?

            Just becau

        • Not saying medical science never makes mistakes, just that collectively we are much better off with rather than without it.

          You are free to avoid all medications because Thalidomide. Good luck to you.

    • Conflation and wild assumptions much?
      The scenario you pose is also true of the people who say they follow the science then don't for political expediency.

  • Those with Liberal Arts cells are, again, out of luck. :-)

  • Haven't they been saying this exact thing for at least 20 years now? Stem cell diabetes research seems to be the fusion power of biotech - continuously ten years away.

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