New bio-artificial "encapsulife" pancreas points to cure for diabetes

Aug 8 2013

The Squash Diabetes Campaign, launched by the Georgetown University Women's Squash Team* in December 2012 and sponsored by New Generation Foundation, today announced a $125,000 grant provided by the Chicago-based Chauncey and Marion D. McCormick Family Foundation. The grant will support efforts to launch human trials utilizing new breakthroughs in living-cell bio-artificial pancreas technology and pursue scalable sources of islet cells for transplant recipients.

"In addition to advancing this proven technology, this generous grant raises two important banners," said Tom Gibson, President of New Generation Foundation:

• "It marks the beginning of our 'public' period, where Squash Diabetes will now be more visible in our advocacy and programmatic work -- beginning this September;
• It also helps honor the life of the late Mrs. Charlotte McCormick, who had the gift of creative caring and was one of the first private philanthropists to provide major financial support to living-cell encapsulation technology -- to cure diabetes."

New Bio-Artificial "Encapsulife" Pancreas -- Points To A Cure for Diabetes

Successful animal trials in dogs and primates validate the great promise of automatically reversing diabetes, without use harmful immunosuppression drugs. A living-cell bio-artificial pancreas is comprised of encapsulated living islet cells, organized into a "patch." When the living-cell patch is implanted under the skin, it automatically produces insulin in response to glucose stimulation in the diabetic.

The most successful progress in this arena is based on NASA-derived technology discovered and advanced by physicist-astronaut Dr. Taylor Wang, Professor Emeritus of Vanderbilt University and more recently through Dr. Wang's collaboration with Dr. James Markmann, Chief of Transplant Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Source: New Generation Foundation