Reverse vaccine for Type 1 Diabetes

What is reverse vaccine?

Unlike normal vaccines, which train the immune system to destroy a certain kind of cell, this treatment instead suppresses immune cells to keep them from doing the same thing. A "reverse vaccine" that targets the cells that attack insulin producers seems to have passed its first test in humans.

Reverse Vaccine - A cure for Type - 1 Diabetes????

Mechanism of Type 1 Diabetes:

The underlying pathology of type-1 diabetes is very complex and remains poorly understood. This is mainly because the disease occurs in an inaccessible organ, the pancreas, in patients who usually can go on to live a long and productive life.  In type 1 diabetes, the immune system typically attacks insulin-producing cells for reasons scientists still don't quite understand.

The only available therapy for this at the moment is to administer insulin either by injection or via a pump on a daily basis for the rest of the patient’s life.

Many patients with type-1 diabetes display a common feature: they generate antibodies to certain beta-cell proteins which circulate in the bloodstream. Among these antibodies are those that attack insulin itself. These often appear early in the course of the illness in young children.

How scientists worked to solve Type 1 Diabetes?

So the researchers tested the idea that they could induce a tolerance to insulin by injecting a specially engineered DNA molecule into patients. This molecule carries the code to produce insulin’s precursor, proinsulin, directly inside the muscles of patients.

This would mean that rather than acting as an alternative supply of the hormone, the DNA would allow proinsulin to be produced and to influence the immune system. This could then raise the patient’s tolerance so that the immune cells that kill off the beta cells in the pancreas might be either reduced or eliminated.