The Faustman Lab
I first remember reading about Denise Faustman from a disputed article claiming that she “cured” mice of Type 1 Diabetes. It was ground-breaking research that she started back in 2001 and she is still working on getting her research through the FDA.
Dr Faustman gives me hope about a possible cure for Diabetes. She also could be on the brink of discovering how the
Dr Faustman’s Lab is funded in part by Lee Iacocca, the CEO who turned Chrysler around in the 1980′s. Her research to date has not received any large scale funding from the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and is raising funds privately to go through FDA screening. Primarily this is due to the lack of a patentable drug for the procedure that was shown to reverse Type 1 Diabetes in mice.
The latest news from the lab can be summed up in the first paragraph of their press release from June 28, 2010:
“BOSTON – Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Iacocca Foundation announce today thecompletion of the Phase I BCG clinical trial in type 1 diabetes, as well as the submission of all safety reports to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the MGH data safety monitoring boards. Plans for the Phase II clinical study, which will continue the investigation of bacillus Calmette-Guerin(BCG) vaccination as a treatment for people with existing type 1 diabetes, are actively underway.”