Vertex’s cell therapy gives early hope for weaning some type 1 diabetes patients from insulin

A rad­i­cal new way of treat­ing type 1 di­a­betes keeps pro­duc­ing promis­ing ear­ly da­ta, rais­ing hopes that a cell ther­a­py might one day be­come a cure for the dis­ease.

The da­ta, from a small tri­al, are the most ad­vanced clin­i­cal re­sults yet from Ver­tex Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ VX-880 pro­gram, which con­sists of an in­fu­sion of lab-grown, in­sulin-pro­duc­ing cells made from stem cells. Most no­tably, the newest re­sults in­clude two pa­tients with over a year of fol­low-up, each of whom have shown sig­nif­i­cant drops in their A1C blood sug­ar lev­els and no se­vere hy­po­glycemic events, and re­main free from us­ing in­sulin as of a May da­ta cut-off. Da­ta from three ad­di­tion­al pa­tients, who re­ceived the ther­a­py more re­cent­ly, are fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar tra­jec­to­ry.

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