Veritas, Vol. 43, No. 01, September 2000

              Veritas
September 2000
Volume 43 • Number 1
For the Faculty and Staff of the University of Miami
Clinton names DRI as test site for new diabetes treatment
Can diabetics live a normal life without the need for insulin? Is a cure for juvenile diabetes possibly within our reach?
Those are the questions researchers at the University’s Diabetes Research Institute will help answer now that President Clinton has announced it as one of the ten test sites for a promising treatment that has successfully reversed the insulin dependence of seven diabetics.
Tested at the University of Alberta in Canada and known as the Edmonton Protocol, the treatment was first reported in the Neiv England Journal of Medicine and has sparked nationwide interest from tens of thousands of people with Type I diabetes, the most serious form of the disease.
In Type I diabetics, the body destroys the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, a hormone that enables the body to convert foods into energy. The Edmonton Protocol is a procedure for transplanting islet cells that has produced unprecedented results in those tested.
“Type I diabetes, commonly known as juvenile diabetes, affects a million Americans alone, half of them
children,” said President Clinton at the NAACP convention in Baltimore, where he announced the ten test sites. “But research has taken us to the threshold of a potential new breakthrough. If we can repeat these preliminary findings, it could put a cure for juvenile diabetes within our reach, a true miracle.”
Camillo Ricordi extracts islet cells from a pancreas. Ricordi and his team at the DRI will perform four transplants over the next 18 months as part of the Edmonton Protocol trials.
The DRI will be part of a $5 million multi-center effort overseen by the Immune Tolerance Network. The mission: to confirm the success of the Edmonton Protocol in producing longterm islet survival that eliminates diabetics’ need for insulin.
About 40 patients will receive islet
transplants in the next 18 months through the ITN clinical trials. Only patients between 18-65 who have had hard-to-manage Type I diabetes for at least five years will be eligible for the trials.
The other centers are located in Edmonton, Canada; Minneapolis,
Minnesota; Boston, Massachusetts;
St. Louis, Missouri; Seattle,
Washington; and Bethesda, Maryland; with additional European sites planned in Geneva, Switzerland; Giessen,
Germany; and Milan, Italy.
"Nobody's ever gotten a 100 percent success rate before. It's like giving
a double transplant."
Islet cell transplantation has already been done at the DRI, where v *
Camillo Ricordi, scientific director and chief academic officer, has been one of the worldwide leaders in the field for years. In fact, many centers around the world have performed such transplants.
But the Edmonton Protocol is an unprecedented breakthrough because the seven patients in the trial have had their insulin dependence reversed.
“Nobody’s ever gotten a 100 percent success rate before,” says Ricordi.
How did they do it? For each patient, they used islet cells from two donor pancreases instead of one. “It’s like giving a double transplant,” says Ricordi.
The procedure is not perfect, though. Patients must take anti-
rejection drugs for life. The powerful drugs, necessary to get the body to accept the islet cells, can cause other complications such as cancer.
Achieving tolerance is an area of research that the Edmonton Protocol trials also will address. “This trial will serve as a platform for future ITN studies to investigate new tolerance therapies, treatments that may replace the lifelong immunosuppressive drugs that transplant recipients currently require to maintain functioning islets,” says Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the lead sponsor of the ITN.
Organ shortage donation is another obstacle to making islet transplantation a widespread treatment option for patients with diabetes. A million people nationwide have Type I diabetes, but only about 4,000 pancreases are donated each year. So even under the best case scenario, only 2,000 diabetics could have the procedure done. That amounts to about one percent of the diabetics who need transplants. Islet transplants also could be offered to Type II patients later on, making the need for organs even greater.
But Ricordi and his team at the DRI are working on the problem by pushing for increased donation of pancreases and testing procedures for insulin independence with cells from only one donor.
Indeed, the dawn of a new medical age beckons.
From Mozart to jazz, Festival Miami offers music’s best
And the band plays on.
Festival Miami 2000, the annual concert series presented by the School of Music, kicks off South Florida’s cultural season with an extravaganza of musical entertainment and excitement. This year’s festival, now in its 17th season, runs from September 16 through October 27 and includes more than 25 concerts and special events.
Festival Miami 2000 will please a wide range of musical tastes from orchestral to piano to flamenco to jazz and traditional Cuban music. The festival’s opening night will present a performance by the University’s Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Sleeper, and featuring guest artist Stefan Jezierski, principal hornist with the Berlin Philharmonic. The concert will include the world premiere of a concerto for horn and orchestra by Sleeper.
“Festival Miami is a manifestation of the School of Music’s historic commitment to serve as a major cultural and educational resource for the South Florida community,” says William Hipp, dean of the School of Music. “The quality and scope of this festival is really unsurpassed, and we continue to be encouraged by the local, regional, national, and international recognition that it has increasingly received during its 17-year history.”
Highlights of this year’s festival include a special guest appearance by internationally renowned flutist
The players: Songwriter Amy Carol Webb, flutist Nestor Torres, and jazsi trumpeter Jon Faddis are just a few of the musicians scheduled to perform at Festival Miami.
Nestor Torres, who will perform traditional Cuban dan zones with well-known Afro-Cuban pianist Zenaida Manfugas; a performance by internationally acclaimed pianist Yung Wook Yoo; a celebration of two American masters, Charles Wakefield Cad man and Aaron Copland; and a performance by the University Concert Jazz Band.
All Festival Miami events will be held in the Maurice Gusman Concert Hall on the Coral Gables campus, unless otherwise noted. Some events are free. Ticket prices range from $8 to $25; and $40 for opening/closing night performances and receptions.
Tickets can be purchased direcdy from the Festival Miami ticket office or through TicketMaster. To order tickets or to obtain a complete schedule of Festival Miami events, visit the festival’s web site, www.music.miami.edu, or call 305-284-4940; or contact TicketMaster, 305-358-5885 in Miami-Dade, 954-523-3309 in Broward.