Encapsulife has a new patch that can act like the pancreas. From Deroy Murdock at National Review:
Briefly and simply, Encapsulife's patch would be inserted beneath a diabetic's skin through a simple, minimally invasive, outpatient surgical procedure. The silver-dollar-sized patch contains thousands of islet cells, derived from either live human donors or medically raised pigs. These cells biologically produce insulin when they encounter glucose. The patch's multiple layers shield the islets from the body's white blood cells and other immune mechanisms while letting the insulin diffuse into the diabetic's blood stream. The result is, essentially, an artificial pancreas that automatically generates insulin and avoids rejection without immunosuppressant drugs. (Such medicines can trigger harmful side effects, including limiting the body's defenses against opportunistic infections.)
"Multi-layer capsule systems similar in concept to a Russian matryoshka doll, with the islet cells being the inner-most doll are technically difficult to fabricate and rely on Dr. Wang's innovations," says Encapsulife president Tom Gibson. "Our multi-layer system is the only one that successfully has reversed diabetes in canines and primates." Gibson adds that this patch involves "no batteries, no mechanical break-downs, no kinks in pump lines, no injections, no finger-prick blood tests four to eight times a day, no guessing how much insulin to inject to match meals, no dangerous (potentially fatal) hypoglycemic lows, etc."
6 comments:
Great catch, TD! Thanks for posting this. I have a half-brother who's diabetic and may find this of interest (assuming it becomes widely available).
I have family members with diabetes too, Max. So, I'm hoping for everyone's sake this will come to market soon.
What an amazing invention!
I've been following nanotech, but this is kind of a new twist; layering is a cool way to retain immunofunction while pushing insulin in. Hadn't seen that one!
It's absolutely amazing to me too. Besides the high level ability to go around the immune system, there is no machinery, batteries, etc.
I have a young friend who lives alone and is afraid of going into shock and dying either while alone or with people who don't understand what to do. This happened to him once before, and a mysterious security guard came around the corner and told his friend to give him candy. No one had ever seen a security guard there before--or again.
This is the grace of God through the inventor. Blessings on him. And thanks be to God! This can transform so many lives.
I hear ya, TD - my half-brother's gone into pass-out several times, and it's been pretty weird. One time, a helpful passer-by took his wallet (but called 911 to send help). I passed your link along - now my Mom's looking at seeing if she can buy stock in the company ;-)
Your mom sounds like she is really good at making use of information on multiple levels. I'm impressed. Her son obviously takes after her.
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