Mom Teams-Up with BGU Researcher to Cure Diabetes
Mom Teams-Up with BGU Researcher to Cure Diabetes
July 18, 2014
About Her — Dr. Eli Lewis, director of BGU’s Clinical Islet Laboratory, has been researching ways to eliminate the need for type 1 diabetes patients to inject themselves with insulin.
Dr. Lewis has had three clinical trials of a diabetes treatment using a transfusion drip containing alpha-1 antitrypsin, a protein that our bodies naturally produce when fighting disease.
Alpha 1 has been used to treat emphysema, a rare lung condition, and Lewis hopes to extend this highly safe approach to other auto-immune conditions.
Dana Green’s son Zach getting an infusion of alpha-1
“Participants stopped night time insulin injections — a time when manual insulin use is most dangerous. Some haven’t needed insulin injections for more than two years,” says Dr. Lewis.
Furthermore, he said that because of the positive results, a new phase of clinical trials to determine proper dosing is now underway in all three centers.
When a concerned mother of a child with type-1 diabetes, Dana Green of San Antonio, Texas, began researching possible treatments for her child online, BGU’s Dr. Lewis kept coming up in her search results.
“I came across Dr. Eli Lewis’ work, read all the articles, and researched all the clinical trials,” explains Green.
“The most important thing was that it was safe and there were no side effects.”
This prompted Green to contact Lewis.
She found a local physician who prescribed the alpha 1 treatment and a blood infusion center to treat Zach for the weekly visits of slow-drip infusions.
After just two weeks of treatment, Zach was producing more insulin on his own. After a couple of months, he was taking virtually no injections. This has had a huge impact on the entire family.
Green later came upon the promising work of Dr. Cleresa Levetan, chief of Endocrinology at Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia and Founder of Perle Bioscience, Inc.
“We have developed a therapy that generates new insulin-producing cells from the stem cells already in the pancreas,” say Dr. Levetan. “We came to the conclusion that to have insulin independence, you will need both a regeneration agent and an immune agent to protect those new cells.”
Green took the initiative to connect Dr. Levitan and Lewis, and their research teams may soon be collaborating to developing a broader umbrella of protection for a wider range of patients with type 1 diabetes.
These enthusiastic global research teams believe that they will revolutionize the way auto-immune diseases are treated and make insulin needles obsolete.
Read more on About Her magazine’s website >>
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