Eli Lilly, Diabetes Foundation to Fund Insulin Cell Research

(National Institutes of Health)

Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis, Indiana and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) in New York said today they agreed to fund early-stage research to help patients with type 1 diabetes regenerate insulin-producing cells destroyed by the disease. The funding supports a three-year, $1.4 million pre-clinical research project.

Type 1 diabetes, sometimes called juvenile diabetes, is a disease where the body’s immune system attacks and destroys the beta cells, stopping a person’s pancreas from producing insulin. Insulin is a hormone that enables people to get energy from food. According to JDRF, in the U.S. alone, as many as three million people have type 1 diabetes.

The research will examine the potential to restore insulin production by regenerating insulin-producing cells in a person’s body. If a therapeutic can be developed that regenerates beta cells, it could potentially eliminate the need for insulin.

One approach to this regeneration process involves triggering the body to develop new beta cells by growing existing cells, which can even be found in people with diabetes for decades. Another approach is to reprogram or convert a different type of cell into beta cells.

The research will be led by Pedro Herrera of University of Geneva in Switzerland. Previous research by Herrera showed that alpha cells in the pancreas can spontaneously, and without genetic manipulation, convert into beta cells. His findings suggest that alpha cell reprogramming could be a viable strategy for regenerating beta cells in people with type 1 diabetes.

Read more: Eli Lilly, Boehringer Ingelheim to Partner on Diabetes Drugs

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