Diabetes vaccine displays promising results

A new vaccine for type-1 diabetes has displayed promising results in tests, and may pave the way for the global rollout of the treatment.

In a clinical trial led by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine, it was found that the new vaccine may selectively counter the errant immune response that causes the disease, which affects millions of people around the world.

The study, which was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, found that the levels of a blood-borne proxy of insulin production were maintained or even increased over a 12-week dosing period, which suggests that recipients may have endured less ongoing destruction of beta cells, which are responsible for producing and secreting the peptide hormone insulin after a meal.

Furthermore, experts found that blood levels of a specific group of immune cells that inappropriately locate and destroy a protein found only on beta cells seemed to have been selectively depleted in patients receiving the vaccine.

The results are "very exciting", according to Dr Lawrence Steinman, professor of pediatrics and of neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford, who said that no adverse effects, serious or otherwise, were observed as a result of the vaccine.

"The results suggest that the immunologist’s dream of shutting down just a single subset of dysfunctional immune cells without wrecking the whole immune system may be attainable," he added.

Over the course of the 12-week trial period, the fact that the drug successfully maintained levels of the blood-borne proxy of insulin shows that beta cells were not destructed, which is usually the case in people suffering from type-1 diabetes, the experts highlighted.

This gives researchers hope that the findings will produce a drug that can combat the disease, Dr Steinman explained.

"This vaccine is a new concept. It’s shutting off a specific immune response, rather than turning on specific immune responses as conventional vaccines for, say, influenza or polio aim to do," he concluded.

Posted by Fiona Griffiths