The first patient to test a new treatment for Type 1 diabetes, developed over decades and administered by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, seems to have been cured of the disease, a report says.
According to The New York Times, the treatment, which uses stem cells that produce insulin, was administered to Brian Shelton, age 64, the clinical study’s first patient, on June 29. Shelton was given an infusion of cells, “grown from stem cells but just like the insulin-producing pancreas cells his body lacked.”
Now, Shelton’s body automatically controls its insulin and blood sugar levels, the report stated.
Prior to the treatment, Shelton’s life was “ruled by Type 1 diabetes,” the report said. When his blood sugar plummeted, Shelton would lose consciousness without warning. An episode in which he passed out while delivering mail forced him to retire at age 57, after a quarter-century working in the Postal Service.
Early this year, his ex-wife, Cindy Shelton, who had taken him into her home in Elyria, Ohio, because she was “afraid to leave him alone all day,” noticed a call for people with Type 1 diabetes to participate in a Vertex Pharmaceuticals clinical trial, The Times reported.
Research led by a Harvard University biologist, Doug Melton, led to the treatment. Melton vowed to find a cure for Type 1 diabetes and has been on that 30-year quest after his baby son and then his teenage daughter got the devastating disease.
Shelton’s positive response to the treatment — he may be the first person cured of the disease — has experts “daring to hope” that there may be help on the way for many of the 1.5 million Americans who have Type 1 diabetes, the report said, noting that it is not intended as a treatment for the more common Type 2 diabetes.
“It’s a whole new life,” Shelton said. “It’s like a miracle,” The Times cited.
While Shelton’s results have astonished diabetes experts, they urge caution, as the continuing study “will take five years, involving 17 people with severe cases of Type 1 diabetes,” The Times explained.
Dr. Irl Hirsch, a diabetes expert at the University of Washington who was not involved in the research, told the Times: “We’ve been looking for something like this to happen literally for decades.”
While Hirsch wants to see the result replicated in more people, and learn whether there will be unanticipated adverse effects, and how long the cells will last, he acknowledged that “bottom line, it is an amazing result.”
The New York Stem Cell Foundation, says Type 1 diabetics do not produce insulin because their immune system “erroneously attacks the cells that produce it.” Currently, the administration of insulin is the most common Type 1 diabetes treatment.
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