Are you toying with me CL? I have stopped reading these because they always disappoint me.
Tell me about it.
Synthetic insulin delivery cells…worked in mice to control BG…might work in us…someday…
Sounds amazing…and a little too good to be true.
Good research, well supported group:
Neat idea, basically they constructed artificial beta cells and they worked in mice for up to 5 days. Would be awesome if a diabetic only needed a couple shots a week and the beta cells just did their thing.
The article references a publication in Nature (i.e. prestigious) that will be published. I look forward to reading it. Looks very interesting.
I swear, I wish I was a diabetic mouse! They get all the good stuff, don’t they?
This researcher (Zhen Gu) is also working on a smart insulin patch. (The idea is that the material in the patch lets more insulin flow into the body, if the BG levels are higher, and less insulin as the BG levels drop.) This research is being funded by JDRF and others. It sounds to me like he is trying to use the materials science research in both a smart patch and smart cells.
To Eric: I feel your pain about the diabetic mouse getting all the cures, but I do think that mice are better for testing these kinds of functional cures, as compared to testing immunology. It’s clear that mice immunology is quite different than human immunology, and many things that work in mice fail in people. However, this “smart cell” or “artificial cell” is much more a physical thing. The important components here are cell membranes and chemicals, etc. I think those are much more similar between mice and people when compared to immunology.
Joshua
My blog: http://cureresearch4type1diabetes.blogspot.com/
Famous last words where Diabetes is concerned. lol. I remain very hopeful, though, that there is some breakthrough that works for both “Of mice AND men”