A cure for Type 1 diabetes may now be within reach. Researchers have been after this cure for many years now, and it appears that they may be closer than ever before.

A research facility located in the United States has set out and made it their goal to find this cure within the next six years! While six years may still sound like quite a bit of time down the road, this is much closer than where researchers have been in the past.

$50 Million in Funding to Find the Cure

The facility, The City of Hope’s Diabetes and Metabolism Research Institute which is based in California, plans to attack this goal by using massive funding from the Wanek family. This is the same family that owns Ashley Furniture Industries, and they are giving $50 million dollars towards finding the cure for Type 1 diabetes!

The Six-Year Project

This six-year project is a collaboration between The City Of Hope’s Diabetes, Metabolism Research Institute, and the Wanek family who will use quite a few integrative techniques to go after and ultimately find the cure for Type 1 diabetes. Here are some of the methods they will be using:

• Immunotherapy: This involves understanding how the immune system plays a role in diabetes as well as how stem-cell therapy may be able to help reverse attacks on the pancreatic beta cells from the immune system.
• Beta-cell transplantation: This helps improve beta cells by boosting them and then helping them survive for extended periods of time.
• Preventing diabetes complications: Prevention through interventions at genetic levels.

The researchers on board, and particularly Dr. Bart Roep who is the director of this particular research team, believe that the cure for Type 1 diabetes lies within finding out what causes this to develop.

Once this cause of development is determined, the researchers will be able to start treatments which can vary considerably among different people.

A Personalized Medicine Approach

Not only is this research team interested in finding a cure, but Roep states they will use something called personalized medicine, aka precision medicine. This type of medicine is all about figuring out how each patient is different and then using the therapies according to each person’s individual needs.

City of Hope is thought to have the best possibility of successfully taking on this six-year challenge as they have been pioneering treatment options for diabetes for the past 40 years. Throughout this process, the researchers will gain a greater understanding of the disease and hopefully come away with a possible cure. For now, hope remains for the cure!

References