High-stakes race to cure type 2 diabetes

Richard Stubbs is immersed in an international research race which he hopes will lead to a drug to cure one of the world's most prevalent diseases - type 2 diabetes.

If he wins, he says New Zealand will be able to build a massive drug production industry to produce a medication with potential sales of $US200 billion ($NZ289 billion) annually worldwide.

If he doesn't win, he loses everything.

Prof Stubbs' research is so unconventional, substantial financial support from the usual funders has run out.

But he has so much faith in his theory he has sunk about $2 million of his own money into the project. He has remortgaged his house to raise the $35,000 a month needed to pay his staff of three full-time scientists and two PhD students.

He has a applied for $1 million from the Marsden Fund and will find out in November whether he is successful.

Staff cuts are likely if he is not.

"I would love to see someone, or two or three investors, come forward with $1 million-$2 million. That would keep us going for a year or two . . . We're in a race now.

"There's no doubt about it. If we [New Zealand] don't win it, someone else in the world will."

Prof Stubbs, a surgeon who heads the University of Otago's Wakefield Biomedical Research Unit at the Wellington campus, believes people with type 2 diabetes produce a hormone in their gut which stops insulin from doing its job.

Overseas researchers have already discovered a hormone called glucagon-like intestinal peptide (glp 1) and produced a drug which reduces the negative impact the hormone has on insulin.

However, Prof Stubbs believes another hormone he has dubbed "factor X" is the hormone which needs to be targeted.

Over the past 10 years, he and his team have developed a method of analysing blood and painstakingly separating and purifying it to isolate the hormones.

Provided the research continues at the same pace, he hopes to have homed in on factor X within two years.