Human trials are set to begin on a 'diabetes cure' after terminally ill mice were returned to health. There could be a cure within 4 years. If the treatment involving the BCG vaccine works, scientists said yesterday.
A human clinical trial for type 1 diabetes is to start at a leading American research hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, using BCG, a treatment that has been used in Britain to prevent tuberculosis.
The aim is to find out whether Dr Denise Faustman’s mouse studies can be applied to human diabetes. Her studies have shown that mice with a form of diabetes closely resembling type 1 diabetes in humans can be cured. “Hundreds of mice were involved in a number of experiments over a period of years," said Dr Faustman.
"All were suffering from type 1 diabetes with only about two weeks to live."
“They started improving within days after the first injection of BCG was given, and were eventually free of diabetes."
The vaccine destroyed abnormal white blood cells obstructing the production of insulin. The first step is to determine whether the same strategy can be used to modify the abnormal autoimmune cells present in type 1 diabetes, sometimes called “juvenile-onset” diabetes.
“We are pleased to be starting human clinical trials,” said Dr Faustman.
“We are making the step from curing diabetes in mice to determining whether it will work in men and women with diabetes.”
“One of the beauty of this is that BCG is a drug that has been tried and tested for 80 years, “ said Dr Faustman.
“There is no multi- million-dollar drug approval pipeline. It is a generic drug and will be cheap to administer if it works for humans.”
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