Current Research into Cures for Type-1 Diabetes: housekeeping

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Saturday, January 7, 2012

New Blog: Cured In Mice! (And Other Blog News)

I'm experimenting with a second blog, which I'm calling:
Cured In Mice! you can read it here: http://t1dcuredinmice.blogspot.com/
Although the formatting will change a little over the next few months.

My goal is to have one blog entry for every treatment reported to have cured or prevented type-1 diabetes in NOD mice, or any other animal.

Each entry will have the date the cure was reported, one or more links to news reports, press releases, or research papers, and maybe a paragraph on the cure, or quotes from the articles. But I don't plan to put in analysis or discussion in those blog entries. I'm leaving comments open for now, but I really only want comments to note when one of these cures moves to a later stage of research. I may close comments entirely in the future.

Each title will be of the form TREATMENT by DOCTOR at RESEARCH INSTITUTION. Two examples:
Glyphosine by Michels at Barbara Davis Centre for Childhood Diabetes
Escapsulated Beta Cells by Nuvilex at SG Austria

I will use tags to keep track of the basic type of cure being reported. For example, the tags "cure", "honeymoon", and "prevention" will describe when the intervention is effective. There will be tags for the basic types of cure "encapsulation", "immune modulation" etc. And tags for the animal involved (such as "BB rat", "NOD mice" or just "mice" if the exact type is not known.

Why a "Cured in Mice" Blog?

This blog exists because of frustration. My frustration at constantly hearing that type-1 diabetes had been cured in mice (again), but never hearing that it was cured in people. My way of dealing with this frustration is to try to keep track of the number of times people cure type-1 diabetes in animals. After all, the first step to understanding something, is to catalog it.

At the very least, this blog will help readers keep track of how many mice cures are developed each year, what happens to them, and how long it takes to happen. I hope that the data found will fuel other types of "research into research" on type-1 diabetes. It will also help track how long it takes to move from animal to human trials. Whenever a human trial starts, I'll be able to go back to this blog, and see when the same thing was first successful in animals. You can think of this blog as raw material for future research into type-1 cures in mice.

How You Can Help

If you hear of a cure for type-1 diabetes in any animal, then please shoot me a quick email. All you need to do is put "Cured in Mice" in the subject line and put the URL where the news was reported in the email. I can get all the information I need from there. Don't worry if you think others have already sent it in. I'd rather get extra emails than not enough. I'm especially interested in research done outside the USA or reported in languages besides English. (Because I don't read any other language, and get most of my news from USA-centric news sources, I'm much more likely to miss research that is reported on in another language or country.)

Getting Either Blog Emailed to You

If you're reading this on my blog web site, you can easily sign up to get these blog posts sent to you (either this "Cure Research" blog or the new "Cured in Mice" one). Just enter your email address in the "FOLLOW BY EMAIL" box on the right. In the past, I had to have a Google email group for this, but that's a lot of work that I don't need to do any more.

If you are getting this as part of the Google group, please add your email (as above) and unsubscribe to the Google group. I plan to shut down the Google group sometime in 2012.

Reminder About The Blog
There three ways you can help with this blog:
First, tell other people about it! Heartfelt testimonials are the best advertising.
Second, tell me about any clinical trials you know about that are not already covered here.
Third, ask me questions that you have. This tells me what I'm not explaining well, and where I need to put more information into my posts.

Joshua Levy
All the views expressed here are those of Joshua Levy, and nothing here is official JDRF or JDCA news, views, policies or opinions. My blog contains a more complete non-conflict of interest statement.
Clinical Trials Blog: http://cureresearch4type1diabetes.blogspot.com
Cured in Mice Blog: http://t1dcuredinmice.blogspot.com/

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This blog discusses cures and preventatives for type-1 diabetes that are either in human trials or just about to start. Treatments for diabetes are not generally discussed here, unless they can turn into a cure or a preventative. My definition of a cure is this:
1. Blood sugar control without testing and with doctor's visits 4 times a year, or less. Any cure must result in an average lifespan close to normal.
2. Does not require a lifetime of immunsuppressive drugs, so it is not trading one treatment for another. (but a couple of operations, or a short course of drugs is OK)
Obviously, this is my personal definition of a cure; yours may differ.
Because a cure for type-1 diabetes is likely to involve a combination of several different drugs or treatments, I try to follow research into anything which may be an important part of the cure.

My Non-Conflict of Interest Statement

For the first 10 years of running this blog, I did not work for a company doing medical research. In 2018, I started working for Bigfoot Biomedical, which is developing an "automated insulin dosing/delivery solution" (what many call an Artificial Pancreas).
I blog on research aimed at curing type-1 diabetes, and I view Bigfoot Biomedical's work as treating type-1 diabetes (not a cure at all). Therefore, I don't view this work as conflicting with my blogging. However, if you consider the kind of automated insulin dosing/delivery solution that Bigfoot is developing to be an actual cure for type-1, then this would conflict with my blogging. I think they are quite different.
I don't get paid in any way by any company working on a cure for type-1 diabetes; I never have. And that includes free samples, free travel, or free anything. I do sometimes participate in market research studies or focus groups, and they sometimes pay.
None of the hours that I have put into my blog, or the posts that I make to any web site, has ever been paid for. (Except for some very nice and heart felt thank-you emails, and those are worth more than money.)
My daughter has type-1 diabetes and participates in clinical trials. I sometimes report on trials that she participates in, but I do not reveal her participation because I consider her medical history to be private.
I sometimes "beta test" new software or devices involved in type-1 diabetes. When I'm blogging about something where I have been given special access, I say so.
In the past I have volunteered with JDRF and The NIIB Project. I currently am a fellow with JDCA. The JDRF and NIIB work was completely unpaid. JDCA has given me equipment that I use to help my blogging, and on one occasion paid for specific consulting work.