Tuberculosis Vaccine Could Cure Type 1

This is news to me, so I thought I would pass this on. The article explains that a TB vaccine could be a cure for type 1 diabetes. One interesting point at the end is that this study doesn’t have the support of major drug companies because it uses a generic drug and not something they can make loads of money from. This pretty much confirms my theory that drug companies won’t be developing a cure unless the cure will generate more income than the treatment of the disease.

I will be eagerly awaiting further results of this study, but so far it sounds very promising.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110624/diabetes-vaccine-110624/

I read the article. Do you (or does anyone) have a link to the study, or at least the title?

Discussions on Tu about Dr. Faustman’s pioneering work. Several members have gone to Mass General to donate blood to her research & have met with her. There are on-line videos of Dr. F discussing her work. She’s quite charming & humble. Dr. Faustman is constantly trying to raise funds for the next phase trials. I’ve donated to support her efforts.

BMD, you can find Dr. Faustman’s site on the Mass Gen web site.

I read about this in the paper. It sounds promising but it hasn’t even entered phase 2 clinical trials yet. Although the exciting part is that it involves a medicine that has been around for 80 years so side effects must be minimal/tolerable.



More information on the clinical study can be found here: http://www.faustmanlab.org/.



They need another $3.5 million to start Phase 2 studies.

I have been following this eagerly and it sounds really hopeful (and I’m pretty much a skeptic at this point with regard to T1D being “cured”). One thing this might lead to is treatment that at least will help our pancreases (pancrei?) generate SOME insulin. While we may still need to inject insulin, the ability to recover some insulin production might mean fewer complications because control would (in theory) be tighter. It also might mean that some T1D folks could be treated with oral medications.

I realize this is still a long way off, but a girl can dream, right? Lately, with all the media coverage of T2D, I was beginning to feel like us T1D folks had been forgotten about!

Some good news. Just today I read this:
“We have raised $8.5 million for the Phase II BCG human clinical trial in type 1 diabetes. Work Begins!”