Pig cells sweet hope for diabetics
By DAVID TAURANGA - Manukau Courier
POSITIVE SIGNS: Manukau-based trust Centre for Clinical Research and Effective Practice is evaluating a new treatment produced by Auckland biotech company Living Cells Technologies for type 1 diabetes. Centre clinical director and Middlemore Hospital diabetes specialist Dr John Baker says if successful the treatment could have “a dramatic benefit” for the 15,000 Kiwis who live with the disease.
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Middlemore Hospital is leading the Western world in investigating a revolutionary treatment for diabetes.
A Manukau-based charitable trust is evaluating the new treatment that could potentially do away with daily insulin injections for people who live with type 1 diabetes.
The Centre for Clinical Research and Effective Practice is conducting clinical trials on Diabecell, produced by Auckland biotech company Living Cells Technologies.
Diabecell is designed to normalise blood glucose levels in people with type 1 diabetes and is made up of insulin-producing cells taken from neonatal pigs.
Last month surgeons at Middlemore successfully implanted Diabecell into the abdomen of a 47-year-old Auckland man who has lived with type 1 diabetes for 20 years.
The man is one of eight patients involved in the trial which comes after a 13-year ban on xenotransplantation in New Zealand was lifted by Health Minister Tony Ryall in June.
Xenotransplantation is a surgical procedure in which live animal cells, tissues or organs are transplanted into a human patient.
Centre clinical director and Middlemore diabetes specialist Dr John Baker says the man is now doing well and resting comfortably at home.
"Getting the patient through the procedure was a major achievement and we are very happy that nothing serious happened to him," he says.
"The study involves an intensive 12-month follow-up period where we will monitor his health, any sign of infection and monitor indications that the graft is working."
The New Zealand trial is the first in the western world and follows a similar trial successfully carried out by the company in Russia in 2007.
The procedure to implant Diabecell into patients involves laproscopic surgery and takes about 20 minutes to complete, Dr Baker says.
"A small incision is made into the abdominal wall and about a coffee cup’s worth of cells are washed down.
"Eventually they adhere to the membranes lining the abdominal cavity.
"Once there the hormones produced will be absorbed into the blood circulation of the recipient."
It takes up to six weeks for the graft to start working, he says.
Patients selected for the trial had to meet strict entry criteria and up to 400 people volunteered to undergo the procedure.
The eight selected were picked because they had "brittle type 1 diabetes".
"Brittle" means their sugar levels vary widely and they have major problems with hypoglycemia or low sugar levels, he says.
"It’s something that can strike you down without warning and there is no way you can be prepared.
"It disrupts family, social and work life and it’s got a death risk associated with it.
"So if this intervention works, for patients like that it would give them dramatic benefits.
"Potentially it would mean no more of those terrible lows and seizures."
But there’s still a long way to go.
If successful Dr Baker says he expects it to be at least five years before the treatment is registered.
And even after that he’s unsure if Diabecell will ever be routinely available in New Zealand because cost is a limiting factor.
"A lot of high technology has gone into developing this treatment and it would be extremely expensive.
"And because we ration health care in New Zealand through Pharmac the government might choose not to fund the treatment."
Type 1 lowdown
Around 15,000 Kiwis have type 1 diabetes and make up around 10 percent of all diabetes sufferers, Diabetes New Zealand says.
Type 1 diabetes occurs when the body’s own immune system destroys the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas.
The disease is associated with kidney failure, blindness, nerve damage, life-threatening cardiovascular disease and limb amputations.
There is no cure for type 1 diabetes and treatment options include multiple daily injections of insulin.
