What are your thoughts on this?
I think you are referring too this article:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24177519
If it works it would be a blessing, but it is way to easy to say it is the easy fix.
"The drug was found to attack specific types of T-cells that were also involved in attacking insulin-producing cells in type 1 diabetes".
So the drug is targeting the rogue behaving T-cells which is a good approach. But our immune system will still produce these rogue behaving T-cells. In other words a permanent life long treatment with the drug Alefacept is necessary to keep the newly produced T-cells under control. This leads to these questions:
1. is the drug suitable or harmless enough to be taken permanently?
2. are there long term effects to expect like increased cancer rates due to impaired capabilities of the immune system?
It will take a long time to answer these questions with confidence. 5 years at least but very likely 10. We can only hope that the project will have enough funding to survive this timeframe. It is promising and I congratulate the researchers to their discovery.
Will it some day help for full grown T1 diabetics? We do not know yet. Denise Faustman has developed a comparable approach with the drug BCG. According to their research some T1 mice have the capability to regrow beta cells once the attack is stopped. It all depends on the amount of residual beta cells that are left. To increase the beta cells mass will most likely help to have more stable glucose numbers. At the end it might not provide a cure but some sort of relief - which would be very welcome. We will see...