Green light for pig-cell testing

BY AMY MILNE

Living Cell Technologies has received approval to begin clinical trials involving the transplanting of cells from Auckland Island pigs, which are housed in Southland, into eight people with type-1 diabetes.

 

The pigs are housed at Awarua, near Invercargill, in a $2.5 million hi-tech breeding unit and the company has plans to build up to 80 more units in Southland within 10 years. Each will house up to 500 sows.

Living Cell Technologies founding director David Collinson said the project could inject $1.9 billion into the region's economy in that time and create thousands of jobs.

While clinical trials will be carried out at Auckland's Middlemore Hospital, Mr Collinson said the breeding and cell harvesting in Southland would employ at least 50 people per unit.

The approval, confirmed by Health Minister Tony Ryall yesterday, brings the company closer to the end of its long bureaucratic battle to start trials in New Zealand.

It has been waiting for more than two years, during which time the company threatened to take its technology overseas.

Speaking from Melbourne yesterday, Living Cell Technologies' chief operating officer Paul Tan said the approval was great news.

"Essentially the minister will allow us to do the trials under revised conditions.

"And these revised conditions we totally accept."

They included conducting trials only on severe diabetics and providing patients with more information on what was required of them, as requested by the minister, Mr Tan said.

The revised protocol for the clinical trial would then need to go before the Government's ethics committee before final signoff.

Mr Tan was confident the committee would not have any issues.

"We don't see that as a problem."

Mr Collinson expected the committee to make its decision within a month.

Trials would start two months from the time patients had been selected.

Mr Collinson congratulated Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt for his role.

Mr Shadbolt saved the pigs a decade ago, housing and feeding them out of his own mayoral fund in the hope uses would be found for them.

Last night he said the preliminary approval was great news for the region.

It opened up huge opportunities, including the potential to develop courses at the Southern Institute of Technology to train the scientists and vets that would be needed to staff the pig-breeding units, Mr Shadbolt said.

Diabetes is caused by having too much sugar in the blood because the pancreas cannot make enough insulin.

The pancreas contains clusters of cells, known as islets, that produce hormones like insulin. People with "brittle" diabetes frequently experience large swings in blood-sugar levels.

The bid for New Zealand approval was boosted in 2007 after researchers discovered pig cells injected into Matamata man Michael Helyer in 1996 were still producing insulin.

The idea was developed by New Zealander Bob Elliott, who had actually implanted cells in six Aucklanders more than a decade ago, before being shut down by health officials who were concerned about the potential for pig retroviruses to move into the human population.

The new trials will be run by John Baker, clinical director at Middlemore, with four of the patients receiving a dose of 10,000 islet cells followed by four patients who will each have a higher dose of 15,000 implanted.

Diabetes New Zealand estimates 15,000 Kiwis have type-1 diabetes, including 3500 children and teenagers.

amy.milne@stl.co.nz

- © Fairfax NZ News