+ Bcg, pubmed.org faustman DL
Bcg worked well for my plaque psoriasis and I continue to study it for my type 1 diabetes.
It is easier to obtain overseas and cheaper
The us healthcare system cares little about human life
Please help see that Bcg is easily and inexpensively available in the us.
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| United States Patent | RE43,467 |
| Faustman | June 12, 2012 |
| **Please see images for: ( Certificate of Correction ) ** |
Treatment of autoimmune disease
The present invention features a novel combination therapy useful in the treatment of autoimmune disease that increases or maintains the number of functional cells of a predetermined type in a mammal by killing or inactivating autoimmune cells and re-educating the host immune system.
| Inventors: | Faustman; Denise (Boston, MA) |
|---|---|
| Assignee: | The General Hospital Corporation (Boston, MA) |
| Family ID: | 26821843 |
| Appl. No.: | 12/911,587 |
| Filed: | October 25, 2010 |
PHARMA & HEALTHCARE 23,827 views
Here's How Lee Iacocca Wants To Cure Diabetes
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In the late 1990s, former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca handed more than $10 million to Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) scientist Denise Faustman and instructed her to transform an ancient tuberculosis vaccine into a cure for type 1 diabetes. Today Faustman announced the latest milestone in that project—FDA clearance to launch a large trial in people based on what her lab learned from that early research. And the 90-year-old auto magnate continues to fund her studies through the Iacocca Family Foundation, which he founded in 1984 in memory of his late wife, Mary, who died of complications from diabetes.
The trial, announced at the American Diabetes Association conference in Boston, will investigate whether treating patients with the vaccine, bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), will improve natural insulin production in adult patients whose pancreases still produce small but detectable levels of the hormone. If it works, BCG might one day be used to essentially reverse the disease in some patients—even adults who have suffered from diabetes from childhood—says Faustman, director of MGH’s immunobiology laboratory and the study’s principal investigator. And it wouldn’t cost much, either, since BCG has been around for nearly a century and is available in generic form.
“We’re not only going for something cheap and safe, but also trying to figure out a good treatment that might reverse the most severe form of the disease in people who are 15 or 20 years out,” Faustman says.
Here’s how BCG works: The vaccine prompts the immune system to make tumor necrosis factor (TNF), a protein that destroys the abnormal T-cells that interfere with the pancreas’s ability to make insulin. That elevation of TNF has already been well-proven to be quite therapeutic in some settings—BCG, in fact, is approved by the FDA not only to prevent tuberculosis but also to treat bladder cancer.
Faustman’s lab spent years doing basic science experiments to show TNF can temporarily eliminate the abnormal T-cells that cause type 1 diabetes. Iacocca’s foundation, which had been supporting some of that work since coming across the lab’s earliest studies, invited Faustman to present the results of her research at a board meeting in 1999, she recalls.
Iacocca asked Faustman why she wasn’t using BCG to cure diabetes in mouse models of the disease. “I said, ‘It’s too early. We need to do more basic science,’” Faustman recalls. “He looked at me and said, ‘You know, it’s my money.’ We made a deal that if I would aggressively go forward in the mouse he would support me. He gets the credit for supporting the basic science that led to the discovery that TNF is needed in type 1 diabetes.”
Dr. Denise Faustman
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The Faustman Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital
Denise Faustman, MD, PhD, is Director of the Immunobiology Laboratory at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her current research focuses on discovering and developing new treatments for type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases, including Crohn's disease, lupus, scleroderma, rheumatoid arthritis, Sjögren's syndrome, and multiple sclerosis. She is currently leading a human clinical trial program testing the efficacy of the BCG vaccine for reversal of long-term type 1 diabetes. Positive results from the Phase I study were reported in 2012.Dr. Faustman's type 1 diabetes research has earned her notable awards such as the Oprah Achievement Award for “Top Health Breakthrough by a Female Scientist” (2005), the "Women in Science Award" from the American Medical Women’s Association and Wyeth Pharmaceutical Company for her contributions to autoimmune disease research (2006), and the Goldman Philanthropic Partnerships/Partnership for Cures “George and Judith Goldman Angel Award” for research to find an effective treatment for type 1 diabetes (2011). Her previous research accomplishments include the first scientific description of modifying donor tissue antigens to change their foreignness. This achievement earned her the prestigious National Institutes of Health and National Library of Medicine “Changing the Face of Medicine” Award (2003) as one of 300 American physicians (one of 35 in research) honored for seminal scientific achievements in the United States.
Dr. Faustman earned her MD and PhD from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, and completed her internship, residency, and fellowships in Internal Medicine and Endocrinology at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
A Win for Vaccines, but Worries Remain
Doctors who offer easy exemptions could undermine efforts to rein in the antivaccine crowd.
The pertussis vaccine against whooping cough. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
In a growing number of states, parents can no longer refuse to immunize their children due to conflicting “personal beliefs”—at least not if they want their children to attend school. California recently joined West Virginia and Mississippi in requiring a medical exemption from a physician to permit a child to enter school without being immunized. Gov. Jerry Brown signed the controversial bill, SB277, last month.
Most of us rejoice, yet there is still reason to worry that exemptions will proliferate along with preventable diseases. Particularly if doctors feed their patients’ fears and offer easy exemptions with few questions asked.
The overall immunization rate in California is high, but many schools have dangerously low immunization rates. A Hollywood Reporter story last yearhighlighted schools in tony areas like Santa Monica with immunization rates near 25%, lower than those in South Sudan.
Vaccines have been a hot topic since 1855, when Massachusetts began requiring them for schoolchildren. England had more stringent laws: The Compulsory Vaccination Act of 1853 required all infants born in England and Wales to be immunized against smallpox, unless they were considered medically “unfit.” This became the first “medical exemption” for vaccines.
Others objected to the mandate itself—and so began the antivaccination movement, long before actress Jenny McCarthy spewed her views on national television. A clause to the Compulsory Vaccination Act, created in 1898, allowed for “conscience” exemptions, eventually leading to the term “conscientious objector” for those abstaining from military service. In 1898 alone, 200,000 conscience (or, shall we say, personal belief) vaccine exemptions were granted in the United Kingdom.
In California exemptions are now up to the doctors, as parents must get approval from their physician. A legitimate medical exemption might be given for a child who has a weakened immune system, either due to a congenital condition or to chemotherapy or long-term steroid use.
A second reason for an exemption might be that the child had a serious allergic or other adverse reaction to an earlier vaccine. But serious, life-threatening reactions, such as seizures or severe rashes, are extremely rare, about one in every 100,000 doses. (The death rate from measles, by the way, is closer to one in 1,000 cases.)
Pockets of California residents are in an uproar over SB277; a few hundred rallied against the bill in San Diego in April. They would prefer to not immunize their children, or to design custom schedules on the medically dubious theory that the recommended schedule is unsafe. There is no evidence for this.
Unvaccinated children are themselves at risk, but they also put other children at risk, too. The more exemptions are given, the larger the gaps in herd immunity, and the more outbreaks of preventable diseases. Children with cancer who cannot be safely given the recommended course of vaccines, for instance, are among the most vulnerable to others’ so-called personal decisions.
Along with these California residents are California doctors who share in their uproar. Dr. Jay Gordon of Santa Monica, for example, testified against the bill;he has called the bill “disgracefully arrogant” and said parents “must participate in all health-care decisions for their children.” He is not alone, and these doctors will certainly stand by their patients.
Who will monitor the high volume of medical exemptions? Will doctors who opposed SB277 be allowed to dole out faux medical exemptions to their patients? In that sense, the California bill is an improvement, but antivaccination fear-mongers will continue to find a workaround.
Dr. Shapiro, director of pediatric ear, nose and throat at Mattel Children’s Hospital, is a professor of head and neck surgery at UCLA.
