Addition Of A Key Protein Has Successfully Treated Type 1 Diabetes In Mice
Type 1 Diabetes has been successfully treated in mice for ages (or so it seems). Unfortunately, none of this has ever been applicable to humans.
You should check out Joshua Levy’s blog; he knows his stuff and cuts to the chase. I don’t get excited or hopeful about anything until Joshua does.
2 Likes
The fact that so many things are under way though, is exciting, in its own right. I’ll take whatever ends up working…better to have 1 million ideas being tested, than only a few!
1 Like
Hey, this is great news for mice, though. Don’t forget that everyone!
I wish they’d spend a fraction trying to find a cure for humans that they spend curing diabetes in mice.
6 Likes
Someday the answer may come along… and long before it’s ever a breakthrough for humans it’ll be a breakthrough for mice
3 Likes
I wish I was a mouse.
2 Likes
I read several years ago that “Type 1 diabetes” has been cured in mice over a hundred times.
2 Likes
Lab mice today are so genetically similar that effective treatments in mice may not work with non-lab mice…let alone humans. 
1 Like
That’s very distressing for non-lab mice.
I love cheese and cats make me nervous–but cats have been making people nervous for a long time!
2 Likes
Honestly, this story, like many stories on potential cures, kind of depressed me. In addition to it being in mice, it just highlighted how complex the biology of immune regulation is and how much we don’t understand.
In essence, it’s not like there is simply too little or too much of some protein and Bam! you’re done! You’ve solved diabetes! Instead, it seems like there are cells which, when switched on in just the right way at just the right time, can turn bad, and putting the genie back in the bottle is probably not simply a matter of administering a drug one time.
It’s a cell signaling thing and you probably have to mimic the timing of signals and the right concentrations as well… for instance, new studies show that some of these immune factors can either worsen or improve autoimmunity depending on the concentration. Not to mention there are already a ton of anti-inflammatories for conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and other diseases that target cytokine production, and they have only had modest, if any, results in human trials.
Once the autoimmune attack has started, it’s like an ever-reproducing supply of cells has a wanted poster with a big fat picture of your beta cells on it…figuring out how to shut down all those cells seems really difficult to me.
But of course, I do remain hopeful. My personal sense is that we’ll probably have a five- or ten-year treatment that delays onset of diabetes or prolongs the honeymoon long before we have a permanent cure.
2 Likes
But i immune system response in human will be hard to deal with
I wouldn’t obsess over it. Most non-lab mice can’t afford medical coverage anyway.
2 Likes
All mouse-lives matter.
1 Like
But human lives matter more. (Even to mice! 
)
Sorry for the mouseunderstanding.
4 Likes
Starting in 2018 every mouse will have Health Coverage under Mousamacare.
1 Like
Unfortunately they will all have really bad coverage and virtually none of them will be able to afford it
750 million more mice will be covered.
And 1.73 billion will see their premiums increase and their coverage reduced.
1 Like