HOPES that gene therapy will one day cure juvenile diabetes have been raised
by successful trials in mice and rats.
In juvenile or type I diabetes, the body destroys the pancreatic beta cells
that make insulin, eventually causing severe problems. Attempts to reverse
diabetes by adding an insulin gene to other cells have failed, because only beta
cells have the enzymes needed to activate insulin by removing part of the
protein.
So a team led by Ji-Won Yoon of the University of Calgary and Hyun Chul Lee
at Yonsei University Medical School in Korea altered the human insulin gene to…
