Clarifications about the news of the Chinese woman who cured type 1 diabetes

An investigation carried out by the University of Beijing, in China, has made a patient with type 1 diabetes capable of producing insulin for itself three months after receiving a rescheduled stem cell transplant.This achievement is seen very cautiously from the endocrinology service of the Bellvitge Hospital, stating that "all international experiments have manifested themselves at a great prudence because it is only a case and comes from China, a country that has legislationof development of much more lax clinical trials and less demanding than in the West. "

After knowing the news Manuel Pérez, head of the Endocrinology Service of the Bellvitge Hospital, states in medical writing that "methodologically the investigations carried out in China generate many doubts. Other advances have been announced there that later in Europe or in the United Statesconfirm.

In this line, Pérez goes further and clarifies that type 1 diabetes is a disease that is characterized by "the autoimmune destruction of the beta cells of the pancreas, which are those that produce insulin."Because of this, the patient "can only be treated for the moment with insulin and there is no easy healing." Despite this, the specialist does affirm that "we have healing in cases of people who make a pancreas transplant.What happens is that any transplant, either of pancreatic islets or either whole pancreas, needs for life immunosuppressive treatment for rejection. "

Pérez: "Other health advances in China have been announced that later in Europe or the United States are not confirmed"

This strategy is not usually used since, in Pérez's words, "it is much worse to receive the immunosuppressive treatment than to receive insulin. Because of this, the focus of the current research is to be able to make a transplant, whether pancreas orbe insulin producing cells without immunosuppression. "

Despite this, Cristóbal Morales, endocrinologist, member of the Spanish Diabetes Society and Member of the Spanish Society of Obesity, an argument that it is "good news" the healing of diabetes in this patient since "opens the doorsto invest in many more resources to investigate and perform phase 2 clinical trials and phase 3 with greater number of patients. "

In this way, it will be possible to "demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of this type of cell therapy, this transplant of autologous humans" since, for now, it is a "phase 1 still open study."

the barriers to convert cells from another tissue into pancreatic

The method used in Beijing University's research isthat work as metapancreatic cells. ”The researcher confirms that this test "has already been carried out in animal models and works, but in humans there are a number of barriers and immune issues."

The specialist catalogs the success achieved by research as "anecdotal" because "when the cells of another tissue become pancreatic cells, pancreatic cells are not exactly. Then, it is unknown if this will remain effective when one or two years passes, so you should closely follow the evolution of this patient and it is not clear that healing will be a permanent thing. "Because, from the biological point of view, we are still in diapers in this regard. ”

Get to getPatients with diabetes 1 managed to produce insulin by themselves would be for the endocrinologist "an extraordinary change. The problem of patients with type 1 diabetes is that they do not produce it, which has to administer it exogenously, as a drug.The patient's life with type 1 diabetes is a life quite subject to the disease, so achieving a healing in this sense would be a tremendous milestone of Nobel Prize. "

immunosuppressive therapy, a determining factor

The healing of type 1 diabetes occurs, according to Morales, because with the patient's own transplant "an extraction of mesenchymal fatty tissue is made and, in the laboratory, those cells, chemically, differ in pluripotential stem cells, in thepancreatic lot, and then implant in anterior straight and produce insulin again. "

The expert points out that autoimmune therapy can play a determining role since "this patient had a liver transplant" and, therefore, had this factor."In any transplant, to avoid rejection, immunosuppressive therapy is used so that the immune system does not attack the Beta Beta Cell of insulin," Morales said.

Therefore, the question that Morales is asked is whether "that autologous cell transplant, which are cells of the patient, worked and treated in the laboratory to differentiate them in stem cells producing insulin, would have less rejection or if that immunosuppressive therapy would be necessaryso that the body itself does not attack it again by restarting a type 1 diabetes.

Source: Link insulin--9826

Well, the advance is that from blood cells they have managed to obtain stem cells and insulin producing cells, from the patient himself.
That already seems miraculous.
Now you have to study the behavior of these long -term cells and if they need immunosuppressants or something else so that the antibodies themselves do not come back.
There would be the solution, but as long as we have to settle for what the treatments improve.
Of course, in China there are 140 million diabetics and all the investigation is public.
They will hurry.

First, I don't just find if this patient receives immunosuppressive treatment.
You can get stem cells that become pancreàtica però that do not express similarities with the pancreas and in that way it is not attacked by the patient's immune system.
I have not found data of this great detail.

Second.This patient has been putting the transplant for a year and has been insulin for a year.It seems clearly something very promising for our doctors to come to underestimated and say that "we have not yet looked good" ... What balls are they waiting to come out of doubt and check if this method really is feasible?

Third.In the West, as they have said, there are multiple restrictions when investigating because we have to comply with a series of ethical standards, which are precisely those that do not let us get ahead.They would be, to give some examples:
- Do not risk hurting the patient.
- Patient monitoring so that their transplant does not develop a tumor.
- The most important: doing a study to assess whether this cure puts a danger to the economy and so that pharmacists begin to lose money for not selling insulin.

The Chinese will pass our hand through the face and healing will bring them.We lack about 10 or 20 more years.

In other words and in summary.

It is one thing to want to replicate the case and another is not wanting to investigate whether the case of healing is reliable.
It seems that our doctor is underestimating and belittling the work of the Chinese instead of rolling and getting out of doubt if you can replicate and start doing so.

The patient already had a transplanted organ and already received immunosuppressants.He says it in Nature magazine

sherpa41 said:
The patient already had a transplanted organ and already received immunosuppressants.He says it in the journal Nature

It's true, bro.I have seen it later.
Anyway it seems outrageous that the only Spanish doctors who think look at the news above the shoulder or without much interest.