Over 20 years after creating the Edmonton
Protocol, a process celebrated as a
possible ‘cure’ for diabetes, Dr James
Shapiro is at it again. This time, using
stem cells. The academic in Canada is
researching a new possibility of engineering
stem cells to become the insulin-producing
islet cells found in the pancreas.
Dr Shapiro explains: “The biggest
challenges with the Edmonton protocol
approach, where we use cells taken from
organ donors, are that we have to use
organ donors. When we think about the
enormous burden of diabetes worldwide,
463 million people with all forms of
diabetes, it’s been clear all along that there
would never be enough cells to go around
to treat that kind of patient base if the organ
donor approach became a therapy for all
diabetes. The second, perhaps bigger,
limitation is that those donor cells are
allogeneic. In other words, they’re foreign
to the body. Because of that, anti-rejection
drugs have to be given just like any other
organ transplant, like a heart, lung, or
liver, or those cells will be rejected by the
body. To overcome those two challenges, it
became clear to us that stem cells provided
a unique opportunity to fix both the supply
problem and the anti-rejection problem.”
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