A better way to fight type 1 diabetes

Because patient immune system destroys pancreatic beta cells and leaves them unable to produce insulin, they must take injections - sometimes as many as seven a day - to survive. They can wait for a donor pancreas to become available and undergo islet cell transplantation, but the relatively new procedure isn't always successful in the long term and requires the use of immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection of the foreign cells.

Gene therapy uses vectors, such as viruses, to deliver healthy genes and other materials to diseased sites in the body. Dr. Kieffer and his collaborators are using a viral vector shown to succeed in reaching the beta cells scattered throughout the pancreas while leaving other cells alone. Using this vector, Dr. Kieffer hopes to stimulate the growth of insulin-producing beta cells and stop the immune system from attacking those cells without having to shut down the entire immune system. He is investigating how cancer tumour cells evade immune system attacks to see if the same factor could provide protection to beta cells.

"Before we had this viral vector, we didn't have the tools to do this," he says. "Now, we're only limited by our imagination."