Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Follow up to Phase-I: LCT Releases Longer Follow Up Data

LCT has released some more data on their Phase-I clinical trial. This includes longer term data on the first five people in the study, and some news on two later people. LCT encapsulates insulin generating cells from pigs in a special coating so that the body's immune system does not attack them, but nutrients can flow in and wastes and insulin can flow out. You can read their press release here:

http://www.lctglobal.com/downloads/cms_media_resources/2009-02-10-LCT%20Announcement%20Feb%2009%20ClinUpdate%20Final_110209.pdf

My quick review is that this data is more of the same, so my previous comments on LCT still apply:
http://cureresearch4type1diabetes.blogspot.com/2008/12/lcts-research.html (most recent comments)
http://cureresearch4type1diabetes.blogspot.com/search/label/LCT (all comments)
http://joshualevy.pbwiki.com/DiabetesCureReadyForHumanTrials#DiabecellbyLivingCellTechnologies (general status, prior to this announcement)

The quick summary is this:
It can work on anyone (honeymoon and non-honeymoon patients).
The low doses used so far have worked for some people, but not for everyone, but higher doses are expected to work better for more people.
Some people have been temporarily cured (no BG checks or using insulin) for days or weeks as part of this phase-I trial.
The big unknown is how long the implants will work, or how often the new implants will need to be added.
Plus all the normal phase-I risks: only a small number of people have had this treatment and only at low doses, etc.

What I'd really like to see from these guys is a graph showing insulin usage over a 1-3 year period. Or, even more specifically: for people who had a big drop in insulin usage after getting the implants, how much of that drop stayed with them for 1, 2 or 3 years?

Overall, I think this is a strong research program, although this update doesn't have much meat on it.

Joshua Levy

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