Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, N.Y.

Dr. Paul Strumph on Diabetes Research at Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation

ByABC News
November 6, 2007, 5:42 PM

— -- The five therapeutic areas of Juvenile Diabetes Research FoundationJDRF are all important, but most recently, there have been significant clinical advances in the field of autoimmunity. And in that field, JDRF is sponsoring very interesting clinical studies -- that is, studies in people with the disease, looking at antibody-based therapies and autoimmunity-based therapies to try to reverse or halt the progression of new onset type 1 diabetes.

Even more recently, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation announced a cooperative effort with a mesenchymal stem cell company. And the goal of that research is to use these cells that have been very much studied for other autoimmune diseases for treatment of type 1 diabetes. The hope is that in people with new onset diabetes, these cells will hone into the pancreas and modify the immune response where there is inflammation and overactive immune response.

We won't know the answer to these interesting studies for more than two years. But we believe that we're one the right track to maximally using autoimmunity as a method to cure type 1 diabetes.