Stem Cells - Self-help health care

We all want effective medicines, but we want them to also be mass producible. In other words, we want treatments that are both effective and available.

The Edmonton Protocol is a perfect example of just such an effective but largely unavailable medicine. Developed over the past twenty years at the Alberta Diabetes Institute, it helps Type One diabetics reduce their dependence on insulin by replacing their defective pancreatic cells with those from healthy donors.

The problem? The source: there aren’t enough donors to treat every patient. The treatment today is restricted to severe cases, those who have great trouble managing their insulin levels.

Making the Edmonton Protocol accessible to all Type One diabetics will require advances in genetic therapies and stem cell culturing - literally creating fresh pancreatic cells from the patient’s own DNA. Hide full description

We all want effective medicines, but we want them to also be mass producible. In other words, we want treatments that are both effective and available.The Edmonton Protocol is a perfect example of just such an effective but largely unavailable medicine. Developed over the past twenty years at the Alberta Diabetes Institute, it helps Type One diabetics reduce their dependence on insulin by replacing their defective pancreatic cells with those from healthy donors.The problem? The source: there aren’t enough donors to treat every patient. The treatment today is restricted to severe cases, those who have great trouble managing their insulin levels.Making the Edmonton Protocol accessible to all Type One diabetics will require advances in genetic therapies and stem cell culturing -... Show full description