Doctors Close to Implanting First Stem-Cell Therapy for Diabetes

ViaCyte image shows pancreatic progenitor that have differentiated into islet cells that produce insulin, glucagon, and somastostatin. (image courtesy ViaCyte)

Researchers from San Diego-based ViaCyte and UC San Diego provided new details about the first-ever human clinical trial of a stem cell-derived therapy for patients with type 1 diabetes yesterday at a scientific symposium at The Salk Institute.

The early stage clinical trial is intended to test the safety of an approach that ViaCyte has spent over 12 years developing, according to Kevin D’Armour, ViaCyte’s chief scientific officer.

The approach, called islet replacement therapy, implants a semi-permeable packet containing human embryonic stem cells just under the skin of patients with type 1 diabetes. ViaCyte has engineered the stem cells to grow into healthy pancreatic cells that produce insulin and other hormones used to maintain normal levels of blood sugar.

UC San Diego is overseeing the first cohort of patients in the clinical trial, and a simple surgical procedure to implant ViaCyte’s packets in the first patient is scheduled for Oct. 21, according to Robert Henry, a UC San Diego professor of medicine and chief of endocrinology, metabolism, and diabetes at the VA San Diego Healthcare System. Henry said two more patients would get the implants in November and December.

“By the end of the year, we should have a significant amount of information about the first three patients in the first cohort,” Henry said in a heavily attended presentation at the 9th Annual Scientific Symposium of the “Stem Cell Meeting on the Mesa.”

The ViaCyte trial represents “the absolute leading edge of stem cell research,” said Larry Goldstein, a leading research scientist in regenerative medicine at UC San Diego and director of the university’s new Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center. Only a handful of similar efforts in stem cell research have gotten as far as human clinical trials, Goldstein added.

Research published yesterday in the journal Cell describes a

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.