News & Events: Islet Transplant for Type 1 Diabetes

Researcher of the Month: Peter Stock, MD, PhD As a pivotal figure in HIV-to-HIV organ transplantation and its legalization through the passage of the HIV Organ Policy Equity (HOPE) Act, transplant surgeon Peter G. Stock, MD., PhD., continues to strive toward breakthroughs in research. While Stock is mostly known for his HIV transplantation work, he has been investigating pancreatic islet transplantation (also known as beta cell replacement) to cure type 1 diabetes since his days as a PhD student at the University of Minnesota. In May, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine [...]

UCSF News, reporting on the 14th World Congress of the International Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association (IPITA), highlighed improving results in  islet cell transplantation: For the worst cases of type 1 diabetes, islet transplantation already has freed hundreds of people from complete dependence on insulin and from life-threatening consequences of the disease. "However, the procedure still is regarded as experimental by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Islets are clusters of insulin-making cells in the pancreas that are destroyed in people with type 1 diabetes. After [...]

Alison Wesley received her diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes when she was just 11 years old, after she developed the classic symptoms of the disease – severe weight loss, excessive thirst, sugar cravings, frequent urination, and feeling lethargic. To treat the diabetes, doctors put her on the first generation of insulin pumps. She continued to use the pumps off and on until she was in her early 30s. But eventually, even the pumps could no longer help her control her glucose. "I developed 'brittle diabetes'," she explains. "My glucose levels were swinging up and down. I was checking them five to [...]