One man has been breaking the internet after being seemingly cured from Type 1 diabetes. Otherwise known as a chronic disease that has incredibly debilitating effects on the body, diabetes is described by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as ‘a chronic (long-lasting) health condition that affects how your body turns food into energy.
But one new study could possibly change the narrative, after seemingly curing a man of type 1 diabetes, as it looks at the effects of growing new pancreas cells from unprogrammed stem cells.
According to diabetes expert at U.C.L.A., Dr. Peter Butler, who was not involved with the study research, told The New York Times, “It is a remarkable result. To be able to reverse diabetes by giving them back the cells they are missing is comparable to the miracle when insulin was first available 100 years ago.”
The patient, 64-year old Brian Shelton, was signed up for the clinical trial run by Vertex Pharmaceuticals by his ex-wife, after Brian was forced to retire due to his sickness. His diabetes was so horrific that he would have severe episodes of hypoglycemia, which is when his blood sugar levels would drop so low that he would lose consciousness. Shelton explained that there were times it was so intense that he would literally fall “face-first into the concrete.”
Shelton told Good Morning America, “You spend your entire life every minute of the day, trying to keep track of where your numbers are at. I do all the things that I’m supposed to do and nothing was working.”
On June 29, 2021, Shelton was the first patient to receive the treatment, where he was given an infusion of insulin-producing cells in his pancreas, which are just like the ones that don’t function properly for those with diabetes. This infusion of cells work to restore the body’s natural ability to create and regulate insulin, which in essence replaces the lost cells.
As for Shelton, he shares how this entire experience has been a feeling of freedom from the past five decades that he’s been dealing with this disease. While diabetes used to rule Shelton’s life, these days, his daily insulin requirements have gone down to 91% while also having major improvements to his glucose control as well.
Shelton shared with The New York Times, “It’s a whole new life, it’s a miracle.”
Although Shelton’s treatment is not yet available to the public, the hope is that one day, this Vertex Pharmaceuticals treatment will be available to the 1.6 million Americans that have been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. The researcher that organized the trial is a Harvard scientist, Dr. Doug Melton, that vowed to find a cure after finding out that two of his own children were struck with Type 1 diabetes.
The trial is set to run for the next five years with at least 17 patients suffering from severe type 1 diabetes. And despite the early success in Shelton’s case, experts still warn to be patient since it’s still in the very early stages of the treatment.
According to Chief of Cell and Genetic Therapies at Vertex, Bastiano Sanna, Ph.D., in a statement, “These results from the first patient treated with [the stem cells] are unprecedented. What makes these results truly remarkable is that they were achieved with treatment at half the target dose.”
Over 20 Years of Work
With funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard’s Dr. Melton took 20 years of research to convert stem cells into islet cells, which are the insulin-producing pancreatic denizens.
Then in 2014, Dr. Melton partnered with Dr. Sanna while in his previous job and began a new company which they named Semma whose purpose was to bring to the forefront a potential stem cell treatment. Along with other biologist, they were able to ‘demonstrate that for the first time, there was a repeatable, scalable method for growing islet cells and that they could cure diabetes in rodents.’
What came next was Melton and his research colleagues and partners closing a $950 million sale of Semma to the company, Vertex Pharma in order for them to get the money they needed to set up the trials to see ‘if injections of the manufactured islet cells could be done at scale, safely, and if the immunosuppressant drugs, typical of anyone receiving any kind of transplant, did not cause long-term adverse health outcomes.’
On the night that Shelton’s trial results came back, Dr. Milton decided to bring him out for dinner to tell him that the results were not only positive, but that at least for a moment, he was actually cured of the debilitating and chronic disease.
According to Dr. Melton, who isn’t normally overcome with emotion according to the report in the Times, “Let’s just say there were a lot of tears and hugs.” And this is hopefully something that millions of people with type 1 diabetes around the world will one day be able to experience for themselves in the near future.
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