Lee Iacocca

Medical research has come a long way since scientists in a Canadian lab discovered that they could prolong a diabetic dog's life by injecting it with ground-up pancreatic tissue. But imagine a world where individuals with diabetes no longer need insulin injections, or to worry about their blood sugar levels.

Scientists at UCSF are edging closer to that enviable goal – the cure. While the daily administration of insulin is effective, the real fix would involve replacing the patient's insulin-producing beta cells that have been destroyed by their body's immune system.

Partial- and full-organ transplants attempt this but run into complications with host immune system rejection. Plus, the number of potential recipients far exceeds the number of available donors.

Scientists have been able to generate new beta cells in culture dishes using embryonic stem cells and tissue-specific adult stem cells. However, they have not yet been able to produce fully matured beta cells that secrete acceptable amounts of insulin. Additionally, harvesting stem cells from embryos is highly problematic.

In recent breakthroughs, researchers have developed a process for reprogramming fully grown adult cells back into something akin to embryonic stem cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. Building on that technology, Matthias Hebrok, PhD, aims to take these iPS cells and coax them into mature, insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cells. The hope is to one day replace a patient's damaged beta cells with fully functional new ones generated from cells from their own body, thus avoiding the potential for transplant rejection and circumventing the murky waters of embryonic stem cell harvesting.

The Iacocca Family Foundation has awarded a $200,000 grant to support a postdoctoral fellow working on iPS cells in Hebrok's laboratory. The foundation, which was started by Lee Iacocca in 1984 after losing his wife, Mary K. Iacocca, to complications from type 1 diabetes, has invested more than $23 million in the search for a cure.

"I was very pleased to hear that the Iacocca Foundation chose to support our project," says Hebrok. "Given this funding, we will be able to expand our research in this exciting area that holds the promise of patient-specific treatments."

Dana Ball, executive director of the Iacocca Foundation, concludes, "Dr. Hebrok, this project and UCSF were a natural choice for Iacocca funding. We feel that exploring non-embryonic stem cell research is not only important, but crucial for replacement therapy. And we feel that this project has the potential to expand therapy options not only for the treatment of type 1 diabetes, but for many other diseases as well."

For more information about the UCSF Diabetes Center, contact Kevin McAteer at 415/476-3627 or KMcateer@support.ucsf.edu.