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Trials for Type 1 Diabetes Cure
An anonymous reader writes "According to this New York Times article, the pharmaceutical companies and NIH are shunning research for a cure for Type 1 diabetes. There's no money in a cure using medicine with an expired patent. Dr Faustman (researcher/professor at Harvard Medical School) has cured type 1 diabetes in mice and has been approved for Phase 1 clinical trials in humans. The only problem is raising the money, which Lee Iacocca is helping with."
The NYT must be cracking down; the first dozen logins from bugmenot.com didn't work for me.
No problem, I found a copy of the NYT article on Lee Iacocca's page. (Hopefully the server holds up.) Enjoy.
I will be calling Dr Faustman's office tommorow for more information and a follow up appointment. Even if it means taking a trip to Harvard from Canada. My pet mouse needs the cure desparately.
I've been following Dr Faustman's research since I learned of it a couple years ago, and I have a lot of hope that it will work. However, I've also been aware of the fact that if a cure is found, or a cheaper alternative treatment, there will be many obstacles to getting it to us.
Type 1 diabetics are in the minority, but we're still pretty big cash cows for certain companies. Besides the various types of insulin we need to survive, most diabetics that wish to succesfully manage the disease use additional products like disposeable needles, blood glucose meters and strips (big money), insulin pumps, and more. Potentially, it's many thousands of dollars per person per year and not many companies would want to lose that cashflow.
Google doesn't index user sigs, so stop trying to "Google Bomb" with them.
Without a patent, drug companies face competition from those who put no money into research, trials, and FDA approval. Whoever pays for the drug research would incur severe losses. We'd depend almost entirely on government funding, academic research, chance, and philanthropy to develop new drugs.
When it becomes uneconomical to develop a promising drug, usually because it treats too rare of a disease, but sometimes due to other reasons, we call those orphan drugs. Sometimes the government intervenes and finishes the research. Maybe it'll happen this time.
Unfortunately, our medicare system is in a bit of a mess right now. Sorting out things like waiting lists for MRIs and non-elective surgery are big priorities.
Money for pure research projects up here is few and far between (although I'm not saying it's non-existent -- research at hospitals like Sick Kids in Toronto is excellent).
But, agreed...it'd sure be nice if someone took up the gauntlet and pursued a cure for Type 1 diabetes.
-psy
As an Immunologist - I can't even begin to count the number of times we've cured RA (EAE), GvHD, various forms of cancer, etc. in mice, only to have the 'cure' fail, or even make the disease worse, in patients.
Yeah but them drug companies are standing on research that was funded by the govt and carried out at public universities. Cox2 enzyme is a prime example of a billion dollar industry handed from a university to the drug companies for free. Not all of those billions the drug companies claim to be spending are actually coming out of their own pockets. They may be finishing the research privately but you can bet you and I paid for the startup costs.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
I think most medical research, at least that which is done by university professors really is in the name of bettering mankind.
And that is the research that the NIH is paying for.
Historically, the pharmaceuticals though get all of the attention because you don't hear about these drugs until they've decided to market them. It's really a shame.
Vonal Declosion
The article is mixed up. Nobody is shunning islet-cell transplantation for (IDDM) diabetes. Many people in the field believe that the currently most promising procedure is one developed by surgeon James Shapiro in Canada. It is in human patient trials in more than one country already now. A drawback of course (a big one for some who would otherwise be potential patients) is the need for immunosuppressant therapy after the surgical procedure.
The 'big bad pharmaceutical co' angle is mixed up too. This is a surgical procedure. There is no new pharmaceutical at the centre of it. But if new combinations of immunosuppressants prove specially well adapted to patients who have this procedure, that would quite likely be a new combination of features, and patent protection would likely be available for whatever it turns out to be, anyway.
-wb-
Read the article again till the end.
They found that the treatment/drugs supposed to prepare the mice for transplant actually _cured_ the mice. The treatment was supposed to stop the immune system from blowing away the transplanted islet cells. But after the treatment the islet cells _regrew_ back. So there was no need for a transplant.
""No one had cured them," he said. "Here was this treatment that we thought would get them ready for a transplant but - eureka! - the diabetes was cured.""
I would like to suggest that this opinion of drug companies is, in some ways too generous; Its not their fault, its the economics and laws which we set up to drive pharmaceutical research and profits.
Similar outcomes different goals?: Illegal Drug dealers induce a dependency by pushing a prohibited substance, targeting any easy mark. Drug companies discover dependecies by hiring "researchers" to find substances which alleviate or "manage" pre-existing common diseases, targeting any sick person.
These "no-cure" drugs temporarily alleviate the symptoms of the diseases, and even extend the patients life (and thus profits), while, "unfortunately", rarely managing to fundamentally cure anything. When was a drug as useful as penicillin last discovered?
The really clever people are in marketing, its carefully created to spin the appearance of dedicated people attempting to find cures. I find that laughably naive, clearly the economic pressure precludes that from happening. However, I suspect many of the scientists and 'caring professionals' in the field prefer to believe that comfortable fallacy and self image.
To me this focus on researching pushable drugs, versus practical cures, is a natural outcome of allowing the humanitarian medical sciences to be solely driven by raw capitalism and simple greed.
The pharmaceutical companies, will grow wealthier, and the poignant marketing campaigns, and "real soon now cures", will be glossy, slick and convincing, for as long as the hypocrisy continues.
Note: Where there are funds for any cure oriented research, it will typically be in areas where there is a huge PR payback in company image and good will factors.
We, the public, are the addicts, we pay the taxes, fund the basic research, and then have to drink their coolaid and swallow the bitter and expensive pills, just so we can feel better... for a while.
IMHO, there is no cure for this chronic disease of legalized "no-cure" drug pushing, except by radical surgery on the NIH and our health research laws.
There is no god; get over it already! Never exchange a walk on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage.