Insulin-Making Cells Transplanted Into Diabetes Patients Two Patients In University Of Miami Study No Longer Need To Take Insulin

Insulin-making cells have been transplanted successfully for the first time into patients with the most common form of diabetes - Type II or adult onset by researchers at the University of Miami School of Medicine.

“Although these findings are preliminary, our results of complete insulin independence in two patients are extremely encouraging,” said Dr. Camillo Ricordi, co-director of Miami’s Diabetes Research Institute.

Ricordi announced the results Tuesday at the fifth International Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association Congress, meeting this week in Miami Beach.

Without insulin, people with diabetes cannot properly metabolize glucose, a necessary energy source. Some can control their diabetes with diet, but many must take insulin on a daily basis.

In Ricordi’s study, diabetic patients who required a kidney or liver transplant also received insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells and two separate infusions of bone marrow, all from the same donor.

Two of the patients no longer need to take insulin; and a third needs only small amounts.

Ricordi said the transplants could become a new strategy in the treatment of Type II diabetes.

The technique has been used with some success in Type I - juvenile onset diabetes - patients since 1989. Ricordi reported at the conference that some of his Type I patients have remained insulin-independent for five years following an islet cell transplant.

Norma Kenyon, a research assistant professor working with Ricordi, said most islet cell transplants have been done on patients getting a replacement organ because they would have to take antirejection drugs anyway.

Giving islet cell transplants to diabetics who are not getting another organ has been considered too dangerous because anti-rejection drugs suppress the immune system. But bone marrow infusions from the donor of the islet cells appears to trick the body into accepting the cells.