Is a diabetes cure really on the way?

The headlines were really quite dramatic. There was, they proclaimed, a cure for diabetes on the way. And there had indeed been a significant breakthrough in stem cell research.

Scientists at Harvard University were able to create insulin-producing beta cells in large quantities. But a cure? Certainly not an imminent one. It was research that could lead the way to transplantation into humans in a few years with various provisos.

Nevertheless, it is the latest in a number of developments that have led scientists in the field of type 1 diabetes research to be cautiously optimistic.

These include the testing of an aritificial pancreas this would pump the exact amount of insulin to the body, exactly when its needed.

There is the stem cell research and also encapsulation a method of surrounding those cells so the immune system doesnt attack them.

And early next year Professor Mark Peakman, of Kings College, London, and the Guys Bio-Medical Research Centre, will begin a trial of a drug designed to re-balance the immune system to stop it attacking the beta cells the cells that store and release the insulin.

Prof Peakman sees his research and the other recent developments as part of a jigsaw that still needs assembling. For instance, the stem cells are still at risk of being attacked by the bodys immune system.

But Prof Peakmans peptide immune-therapy, in which fragments of beta cells (the cells that produce the insulin) are put into the person at risk of diabetes, would rebalance the immune system.

Without a doubt, all this research is important. More than 400,000 people in the UK have type 1 diabetes 29,000 of them are children.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) is currently funding Prof Peakmans research and 54 other clinical trials.

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Is a diabetes cure really on the way?