Diabetes breakthough announced

While Living Cell Technologies (LCT) waits for approval for its New Zealand xenotransplantation trial, it has announced that two of the diabetics it is treating in Russia have become insulin independent.

The announcement was made earlier this month by its medical director Prof Bob Elliott in San Diego during an address to the International Society for Cell Therapy.

Chief executive of the Auckland-based company Paul Tan said the two patients, a 37-year-old woman and a 63-year-old man, no longer required insulin injections after their last implant of pig cells in January or February.

It was not known how long this situation would last.

It was hoped the ongoing two-year trial, which began in 2007, would help establish that.

All six patients followed up showed lowered blood glucose levels and a further patient, whose levels had risen, had opted out of the trial after 20 weeks.

Researchers found they had to rethink their dosage regime because if there were not enough islet cells implanted they became exhausted, Dr Tan said.

The company says no remarkable adverse effects followed implants and repeat implants (some patients have received three) have been safe to date.

LCT is still awaiting approval for a similar eight-person New Zealand trial which will take pancreas islet cells from specially bred pigs in Kumeu and Invercargill, coat them with seaweed gel and implant them in the hope it will promote insulin production.

Dr Tan said LCT was hopeful a decision would be made soon, once the Government became less preoccupied with swine flu.

Results of the extra tests LCT ordered on its pigs to show they were virus-free were not yet available, he said.