Artificial Pancreas

DiabetesMine – Pancreum Progress Report: Wearable Closed-Loop System Now a Prototype

Remember that little circular, three-wedge closed-loop device known as Pancreum? You know, the Artificial Pancreas system in which you pop in wedges for insulin pumping, CGM (continuous glucose monitoring), and glucagon pumping, all around a little central core controller?

medGadget – A Molecular Implant for pH-Sensitive Insulin Production

Bioengineers from ETH Zurich’s Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel have created a prototype implantable molecular device which regulates the blood pH levels through a closed loop pH sensing and insulin production mechanism.

Insulin Nation – An Islet Therapy Pioneer

Chris Stiehl has the distinction of being the first human ever to receive an islet cells transplant via an outpatient endoscopy. Stiehl had the procedure done through the UCSF Diabetes Center, which is one of the leading islet cell research programs in the world.

iMedicalApps – What the iPhone based ‘Artificial Pancreas’ means to patients and physicians

At the recent 74th annual American Diabetes Association Scientific Session in San Francisco, results from a simultaneously published article in the New England Journal of Medicine were formally announced. The publication consisted of two separate studies demonstrating the efficacy and safety of an “artificial” or “bionic” pancreas for people with type 1 diabetes.

NewsFlash: Insulin Release Band-Aid Sized Encapsulation Device Goes to FDA!

The trial would evaluate the safety and efficacy of a new stem cell-derived encapsulated cell replacement therapy, known officially as VC-O1. Basically, that product uses pancreas endoderm cells derived from embryonic stem cells and would be put into the body using something called the Encaptra delivery system.

DiabetesMine – Why I Am So Geeked About a Bionic Pancreas

We in the diabetes community are no strangers to this technology, or the key researchers behind it, D-Dad Ed Damiano and his partner Dr. Steven Russell. But the trial results they presented at the recent ADA conference have catapulted this into the public eye, for better or worse

InsulinNation – The Bionic Pancreas, the Medtronic Duo, & Pump Wars

The experimental is going mainstream in Europe, as Medtronic announced it has gained approval from European regulators to sell the Duo, a connected insulin pump and continuous glucose monitoring system. From the way it’s described in Fierce Medical Devices, the Duo sounds a lot like the pump-CGM combo that some researchers are testing in their […]

Singularity Hub – Bionic Pancreas Promises Big Boost in Health for TI

A bionic pancreas whose first results in human patients were recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, could make the statement purely factual: If you have type 1 diabetes, you will have to prick yourself once every four days or so to change out the needles in the closed-loop blood sugar monitor and […]

ADA: Bionic Pancreas Effective in Reducing Glucose Over Multiple Days

An automated “bionic” pancreas that incorporates glucagon as well as insulin has shown improved blood glucose for five consecutive days in a study of patients with type 1 diabetes.

Medical News Today – Treatment could spur production of insulin in Type 1 diabetes

Combining two different medications could help patients with Type 1 diabetes at least partially regain the ability to produce their own insulin, a University of Florida study has shown.

Insulin Nation – An Endocrinologist’s Frustration with Insulin Therapy

The bionic pancreas requires patients wear two insulin pumps, one containing insulin and the other containing glucagon, a well as a glucose sensor. A brilliant computerized algorithm hooked to an iPhone is used to pump both insulin and glucagon based on each glucose reading. Will this be enough to overcome the challenges of insulin therapy?

Insulin Nation – Teens Try Artificial Pancreases at Home

In April 2014, researchers with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation UK announced the success of a study that allowed teens with Type 1 diabetes to test artificial pancreas technology in real world conditions.

DiabetesMine – GlySens (Still) Developing Implantable CGM (See Also: ICGM)

The small 16-year-old startup is developing an implantable CGM dubbed ICGM, which in its second incarnation uses a sensor that looks like a fat thumb drive with a quarter-sized circle in the middle.

Associated Press – Stem Cell Advance May Bring New Diabetes Treatments

In a potential step toward new diabetes treatments, scientists used a cloning technique to make insulin-producing cells with the DNA of a diabetic woman. The approach could someday aid treatment of the Type 1 form of the illness, which is usually diagnosed in childhood and accounts for about 5 percent of diabetes cases in the […]

Medical News Today – Breakthrough artificial pancreas study

The University of Cambridge-devised artificial pancreas promises to dramatically improve quality of life of people with type 1 diabetes, which typically develops in childhood. The latest trial, coordinated by the University and funded by JDRF, has shown for the first time globally that unsupervised use of the artificial pancreas overnight can be safe – while […]

Huffpost – Turning Diabetes Over to the Bionic Pancreas

The bionic pancreas consists of three pieces of hardware. There’s an iPhone with an app that contains the system’s control software and algorithm and a continuous glucose monitor (CGM).

ASweetLife – Getting Insulin from Gut Cells: Diabetes Cure Research

Imagine millions of tiny insulin pumps that work really well, measuring your blood sugar hundreds of times each second and secreting just the right amount of insulin. Ben Stanger, M.D., Ph.D., and his research team at the University of Pennsylvania believe that people with Type 1 diabetes could harbor similar cells in their gut.

Insulin Nation – I Was an Artificial Pancreas Guinea Pig!

When JDRF committed to funding research in artificial pancreas technology in 2006, Brobson raised his hand to be a guinea pig. In 2007, he began to take part in human clinical trials of artificial pancreas technology through the University of Virginia Center for Diabetes Technology.

ASweetLife – Lawrence Steinman’s ‘Reverse Vaccine’ Targets Immune Response in Type 1 Diabetes

Sometimes, when you’re stuck and spinning your wheels without making much forward progress, putting it in reverse can get you going. That’s what Dr. Lawrence Steinman and his colleagues are doing by attempting to cure type 1 diabetes with a unique and groundbreaking “reverse vaccine.”

BattleDiabetes – 10 years of being diabetes-free, thanks to pancreatic islet cell transplants

Two patients from Emory University School of Medicine celebrated a huge milestone recently – 10 years of being diabetes-free after receiving transplants of donor pancreatic islet cells.