Word: islets
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Nonetheless, Ayares is optimistic, insisting that pig organs could be available in as little as five years. Hardy believes that whenever the tissue does come along, it will at first be rather small-bore stuff--pancreatic islet cells for diabetics, say--rather than hearts, kidneys or lungs. Whatever it is, even a little new transplant material is a big improvement over what's available now, and for gravely ill patients awaiting a donor, that's no small thing...
...American every three minutes, diabetes in an illness that limits its victims' ability to process sugar and, in turn, affects their other bodily functions. Patients with Type I diabetes, ordinarily diagnosed as children, cannot digest glucose throughout their lives as their immune systems attack and destroy the insulin-producing islet cells in the pancreas...
...center's research takes a novel approach to treating the disease by seeking to transplant functional islet cells into patients without immunosuppressants. While these drugs prevent side effects such as rejection of the transplant, they can also seriously infringe upon the patients' everyday activities...
According to Center officials, the project's strategy is fourfold, focusing on islet transplantation, tolerance induction, autoimmunity and expansion of islet cell supply...
...hope to begin clinical trials of islet transplantation at Harvard before 2000 and to initiate trials of novel strategies to make it work within two years after that," he says. "But these will be trials--if we knew they would work, we wouldn't need a $20-million-dollar center and a commitment for at least five years to work on the problem at Harvard by the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation...