Going out of insulin changed his life

Chris Schuh, 66, from Tallahassee, has been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and hypoglycemia since the age of 30.

She says she would not be alive for the moment without a procedure that would change her life and allow her body to produce insulin.

"My life was threatened on a daily basis," she said about life before the pancreatic islet transplant, performed at Jackson Memorial Hospital by Dr. Camillo Ricordi and his team at Diabetes Research Institute (DRI) and the University of Miami Cellular Transplant Center.

"I did not think of living with my daughter's high school diploma," she says. "I'm alive because of these transplants."

Ricordi, director of the DRI Cell Transplant Center, is one of the world's leading scientists in the field of diabetes research and cell transplantation. Thirty years ago, he invented a device to isolate a large number of insulin-producing island cells using the healthy pancreas of an organ donor. The cells can then be transferred to the liver of a patient with type 1 diabetes via a transfusion.

"If you take islets from a non-diabetic donor that produces insulin," says Ricordi, "you have live cells free of contamination, which can be transplanted safely.

"They will produce a biological function, – as we have shown in this phase 3 trial, which lasted more than 10 years."

In the phase 3 trial, approximately 50 patients underwent islet transplantation and were followed for the duration of the trial. More than 1,000 islet transplants have already been performed in Europe, Canada, Australia and Asia, where the procedure is allowed. He is currently awaiting FDA approval in the United States.

"If the FDA approves the islet transplant," says Ricordi, "we will be able to serve patients in the United States."

The procedure, called the Ricordi method, is used to treat patients with type 1 diabetes suffering from hypoglycemia or low blood sugar levels.

Before learning about islet transplantation, Ms. Schuh explained that she had been trying to do everything possible to maintain a healthy lifestyle, from healthy eating to exercise. .

"I was the most classic case law case, where everything was fine, she says, and nothing worked."

In people with type 1 diabetes, which often afflicts adolescents and young adults, the pancreas stops producing insulin. Type 1 diabetics need insulin injections to stabilize their blood sugar levels because they produce little or no insulin.

Schuh, who claims diabetes is common in her family, received two injections of insulin-producing cells from Dr. Ricordi and her team – one in 2002 and one in 2006. She was on insulin for almost four months after the first transplant. been completely out of insulin since the second transplant.

NEED ONE PHRASE OR TWO HERE TO EXPLAIN THE VALUE OF AN INSULIN?

She first became aware of the proposed trial at the Diabetes Research Institute by reading a diabetes publication while sitting in her doctor's office in Tallahassee.

"I asked my doctor what he thought and he said," You have nothing to lose! "

Schuh also suffered from unconscious hypoglycemia and was not able to detect the warning signs of a drop in his blood sugar. This can cause fainting or even convulsions.

"I did not really understand how fragile I was," she said. "I should park on the side of the road and the police would find me sitting in my car with the engine running. I would try to jump out the window in the middle of the night. I had no conscious memory of that, "she said. "That's what your body does when your mind does not work properly."

Today, her life is completely different, she says.

"It took me a long time to stop testing my blood six to ten times a day, probably 10 years after the transplant, to stop doing it – because you simply do not believe it."

Physical work, like gardening, will lower her blood sugar, she says, but she can detect it now and get something to drink or eat to get up. "

"It worked incredibly well for me," she says about transplants. "You are half conscious when they infuse the cells," she says of the outpatient procedure.

Ricordi, born in New York and raised in Italy, developed the automated procedure method in 1986 while working in Dr. Paul Lacy's laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis.

The first islet transplant took place in 1990 after Ricordi was recruited to the Thomas E. Starzl Transplant Institute at the University of Pittsburgh. He was recruited at the University of Miami in 1993, where he stayed.

Schuh and others who have undergone surgery should take immunosuppressive medications daily to prevent transplant rejection. Medications reduce the strength of the body's immune system, but make the body less likely to reject the transplant.

Schuh has his blood checked every three months. She saw her daughter graduate from high school and then law school. And she is now the grandmother of a 19-month-old girl.

She acknowledges that Dr. Ricordi and his team have saved his life and countless others.

"Dr. Ricordi developed the device and the procedure and taught everyone else to filter the islet cells of a cadaver, "she says. "These people have made considerable progress in finding diabetes treatment."

In 2001, Ricordi received the Nessim Habif World Surgery Award (University of Geneva) for the development of a technology "that has made a significant contribution to the advancement of the field of surgery".

The following year, he received the Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award from the American Diabetes Association.

The Ricordi method is open access, which means that the invention is free of intellectual property rights and is freely distributed and provided to researchers and clinical centers around the world.

"Miami has been at the heart of making this technology available around the world," Ricordi said.

His most recent work with the DRI team is on a new technology called DRI BioHub, a bio-designed mini-organ that mimics the pancreas to restore the natural production of insulin in people with diabetes-type 1.

It was created to minimize the inflammatory reaction that occurs when the islets are implanted in the liver or in other sites with sudden contact with the blood. If these results work, this may open the way to islet transplantation without immunosuppression.

"Ultimately, we want to offer islet transplantation to all patients with type 1 diabetes and possibly even patients with type 2 diabetes requiring insulin," says Ricordi. "We are working to reduce the need for anti-rejection drugs and possibly transplant without the use of anti-rejection drugs," he said.