Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
A French start-up has developed the first European implantable bioartificial pancreas for treating patients with type 1 diabetes. Human clinical trials are scheduled to begin by 2016.
Type 1 diabetes, known as insulin-dependent diabetes, affects 25 million people worldwide. Current therapies have certain limitations. Daily insulin injections using pens or pumps are inconvenient for patients and do not enable their glycaemia to be regulated correctly. Pancreas and islets of Langerhans transplants are limited by the tiny number of donors (one pancreas donor per three hundred patients) and the necessary life-long immunosuppressive drug treatment may have major side effects. “Hence the idea of a pouch made of watertight material, full of insulin-producing cells needed by the body and safe from attack by its immune system,” explains Séverine Sigrist, Defymed's CEO. This Strasbourg-based medtech company designed this bioartificial pancreas following research carried out by the Centre Européen d’Etude du Diabète (CEED), of which it is a spin-off.
http://www.emdt.co.uk/daily-buzz/french-start-creates-artificial-pancreas
Type 1 diabetes, known as insulin-dependent diabetes, affects 25 million people worldwide. Current therapies have certain limitations. Daily insulin injections using pens or pumps are inconvenient for patients and do not enable their glycaemia to be regulated correctly. Pancreas and islets of Langerhans transplants are limited by the tiny number of donors (one pancreas donor per three hundred patients) and the necessary life-long immunosuppressive drug treatment may have major side effects. “Hence the idea of a pouch made of watertight material, full of insulin-producing cells needed by the body and safe from attack by its immune system,” explains Séverine Sigrist, Defymed's CEO. This Strasbourg-based medtech company designed this bioartificial pancreas following research carried out by the Centre Européen d’Etude du Diabète (CEED), of which it is a spin-off.
http://www.emdt.co.uk/daily-buzz/french-start-creates-artificial-pancreas