In a previous essay I wrote about the Edmonton Protocol paper as a diabetes classic. I realized that the second classic I needed to discuss had to be Banting & Best’s discovery of insulin. I had never read it. Then I discovered how hard it was to get.
Author Archive
Death By Diabetes
Monday, June 22nd, 2009
Before there was insulin diabetes was fatal, usually in a few weeks, always in a year. Even today some people die from type 1 diabetes. Our concern in this era of diabetes management is using all of the tools we have to simulate the activity of islets of Langerhans; the input is insulin and the output is glucose levels in the blood.
2009 Banting Award
Friday, June 12th, 2009
One of the pleasures of the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association in June is the plenary address of the winner of the highest award given for scientific achievement, the Banting Award (named for one of the discoverers of insulin). This year’s winner was George Eisenbarth of The Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes at the University of Colorado Denver and his achievement was nothing less than the demonstration that type I diabetes is an autoimmune disease.
Mouse Metabolism and Diabetes Research
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
With wearying frequency come press releases announcing that a new approach has cured diabetes in animals and that the human cure is only a few years away. With equal frequency most such reports turn out to be wrong. So why don’t animal results predict what all diabetics hope for?
History of Diabetes Research
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
Yesterday I met with a prominent leader of San Francisco’s Investment Community, and a longtime supporter of T1D research. We were talking about our work to solve diabetes with the Islet Sheet, and naturally the conversation turned to the multiple ventures that have been formed to cure diabetes with encapsulated islets and had attracted speculative investment (including one he and I had been involved with). I said that a big reason no one would invest in our company was the failure of all these companies; and that I have recently added up the total invested and lost, and it was about a third of a trillion dollars. He stared at me for a time and finally said, “that’s a number I’m going to write down.”
The Edmonton Protocol
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
Diabetes cured! screamed the press. Few type 1 diabetics can forget the excitement that greeted the Edmonton Protocol’s publication and the surge of hope it engendered in 2000. Although the authors of the paper did little to encourage the hyperbole, it was hailed as a cure. It is not, but it is perhaps the most important milestone to date in the development of islet transplantation.