June 17, 2005

MGH diabetes research recognized

This spring, Denise Faustman, MD, PhD, director of the MGH Immunobiology Laboratory, has been developing an important blood test that will monitor the effectiveness of a groundbreaking diabetes therapy discovered and developed in her lab. While her work has been followed intensely by the scientific press, it also has been recognized by some less expected sources — the Lee Iacocca Foundation and Oprah Winfrey.

In 2003, Faustman and David M. Nathan, MD, director of the MGH Diabetes Center, went public with an extraordinary discovery — that end-stage diabetes could be permanently reversed in mice by regeneration of the islets in the pancreas. The discovery opened a doorway for an entirely new approach to diabetes treatment — the possibility that the pancreas of a person with type l diabetes, which cannot manufacture insulin, could resume producing insulin like a “normal” pancreas if the underlying disease was benignly and completely removed. From left, Peter L. Slavin, MD, president of the MGH, Iacocca and Faustman

Having cured mice of type 1 diabetes, Faustman has since shifted her focus to curing people. Moving her discovery from an animal model to human therapy is a complex process, however, and it will likely be another two years before the first clinical trials will begin.

Faustman notes Nathan first identified insulin dosing as the key to diabetes management and likewise credits him with the strides her lab has made toward bringing the new therapy to patients. “Without the great connection that exists between basic research and clinical care here at the MGH, none of this would have been possible,” Faustman says. “For research to advance, there must be a bridge between the laboratory and the patient bed. David Nathan has been that bridge.”

For the past several years, Faustman's research has been supported by the Iacocca Foundation, which has pledged to raise $11 million to fund phase I, II and III trials between now and 2008. Former Chrysler president Lee Iacocca's late wife, Mary, died from complications of type 1 diabetes in 1983. On April 26, the MGH hosted a Cure Diabetes Now dinner to raise money toward that goal, with Iacocca and his daughter Kathryn Iacocca Hentz in attendance. And in May, Faustman was featured in the fifth anniversary issue of O, The Oprah Magazine. Her work took the magazine's top spot on a list of the five biggest health breakthroughs by women scientists in the past five years.

While Faustman appreciates the recognition, mostly she is grateful that the financial support makes it possible for her research to continue. “Type 1 diabetes is a devastating disease,” she says. “It strikes children, it's difficult to manage and many people still die of its complications. I expect the recognition I've received has a great deal to do with how desperately people are hoping for a cure.”