Hello old friends! I haven’t been on here in a looooonnnnng time. I’ve come back because I’m excited about a company I was recently introduced to, and curious if others have heard anything about it.
Minutia is a new company, founded by a young woman with diabetes and two very heavy-hitting scientists, that’s working on a cure for T1D. I had the good fortune to tour their lab, just off the UC Berkeley campus, a couple weeks ago, and for the first time in a while I got excited about “cure talk”. I’ve had diabetes long enough to be very jaded and cynical about cure talk, so a tingling bit of hope feels almost euphoric.
Have any of you fine folks heard of Minutia? Do you know anything about it, or have any opinions about their approach to a cure? Seeing their operation, and meeting their small but mighty crew (several of whom have T1D, themselves) made me feel hopeful about a cure, which is scary, because, you know, it’s still 10 years away…
Emily - It’s so good to get an update from you! Would love to catch up with what you’re up to. I don’t know anything about Minutia but I’ll read the linked info. Even an “imminent” cure will not directly benefit me but I’d always be happy to read about a cure that might benefit a younger generation. Take care. - Terry
Minutia is on a mission to develop a “functional cure” for Type 1 diabetes by creating insulin-producing cells in the lab. These cells could be transplanted into patients to reverse their diabetes without the need for lifelong anti-rejection drugs.
One of these opportunities will eventually pay off!
Does it require or rather, is it going to require immunosuppresent drugs? If not than it’s great. If yes, then there’s vx264 from vertex (which doesn’t require those harmful drugs)
Thanks for sharing the information though, I hope one day I can resume my normal life without depending on all of this what I use now
As I understand it, Minutia is specifically trying to avoid using immunosuppression in their solution, by doing something called “tolerizing” the immune system to the implanted cells. I confess that I don’t understand what this means, but I’m with you about taking drugs for immunosuppression.
I googled “immune tolerizing”, and got some primary research papers that went over my head. Do any of you fine understand it, and can you explain it in layman’s terms?
I did. not do any research yet, I am currently on a ski vacation at Mountain Village, Telluride. Tomorrow will be my last day skiing. I will look into it once I am back home in Florida again. In the meantime, I will be visiting several doctors at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. Hopefully will be doing some predictive broad gene testing to see what other surprises are ahead (hopefully none) According to my logic our immune system does not really tolerate anything and simply attack anything they find that does not belong to out body (Which is the case of our T-cells attacking the islets, resulting as a T1D now ). I wanted to participate in VX264, from vertex, because it was the only cure potential without any possible harm that I was able to find. Unfortunately my blood type is O+ and my a1C is between 5.3-5.6 range. Which did not comply with their requirements. They needed other blood types, for whatever reason, and a1C at or greater than 7 if I can remember correctly. I have received one email recently about dexcom testing, but it requires you to go above 300 for 1 hr and below 70 for 1 hr. I can not do those things as FAA requirements for a type1 to have an maintain the first class medical certification is quite restrictive. (30 day cgm data must have less than 1% very low(less than 55), less than 4% low (below 70) and less than 5% high. I usually manage %99 TIR (70-180)(requirement earlier was 80-180) but now it dropped to 97% due to skiing and cold weather high altitude etc
It sounds good, right? I’m interested to watch their progress on this. It feels emotionally dangerous to me to get hopeful about cure research (cue “cured in 10 years” joke, and accompanying eye-rolling), but this company has definitely piqued my interest.
at Mountain Village, Telluride. Tomorrow will be my last day skiing. I will look into it once I am back home in Florida again. In the meantime, I will be visiting several doctors at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. Hopefully will be doing some predictive broad gene testing to see what other surprises are ahead (hopefully none) 
). I wanted to participate in VX264, from vertex, because it was the only cure potential without any possible harm that I was able to find. Unfortunately my blood type is O+ and my a1C is between 5.3-5.6 range. Which did not comply with their requirements. They needed other blood types, for whatever reason, and a1C at or greater than 7 if I can remember correctly. I have received one email recently about dexcom testing, but it requires you to go above 300 for 1 hr and below 70 for 1 hr. I can not do those things as FAA requirements for a type1 to have an maintain the first class medical certification is quite restrictive. (30 day cgm data must have less than 1% very low(less than 55), less than 4% low (below 70) and less than 5% high. I usually manage %99 TIR (70-180)(requirement earlier was 80-180) but now it dropped to 97% due to skiing and cold weather high altitude etc