Within three years, insulin-producing islet cells from pigs may be used in clinical trials on a path to finally cure insulin dependant diabetes.
This key finding was the discovery of Dr. Bernhard Hering, Scientific Director of the Diabetes Institute for Immunology & Transplantation at the University of Minnesota and his team, who documented their medical breakthrough in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Medicine in March of 2006.
On Thursday, September 20, at 10:00 a.m. CDT, Hering will present the latest research on pig islet xenotransplantation at the Diabetes Research and Wellness Foundation Symposium at the Hyatt Regency Minneapolis in Minneapolis, MN.
The symposium will be part of The Transplantation Society's 2007 Joint Conference (www.cts-ipita-ixa-2007.org), an international event that will unite the greatest innovators from three sections of the Transplantation Society – the Cell Transplant Society (CTS), the International Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association (IPITA) and the International Xenotransplantation Association (IXA) – for the first time in history. Hering also serves as the Joint Conference president.
Research has shown that the transplantation of islet cells, harvested from the pancreas of a pig, yields a long-term reversal of diabetes in monkeys, opening the path to unprecedented new opportunities for human patients with the disease. To oversee immunosuppression issues, researchers are now working to transplant porcine islets in an engineered pre-vascularized, cytoprotective and immune-privileged implantation site. This procedure has a number of advantages including: