Technology

What does a cure for Type 1 Diabetes look like?

When Captixbio asked this question of patients and their families, most of the answers we received were about what patients didn’t want – “no injections”, “no finger pricks”, “no gadgets”, “no fear of hypos”, “no carb counting”…

Joshua Levy is father of a daughter with Type 1 and an avid blogger who regularly reports on current research that may lead to a cure for Type 1. With his permission we reproduce his definition of a “cure” here…

My definition of a cure is this: 1. Blood sugar control without testing and with doctor’s visits 4 times a year, or less. Any cure must result in an average lifespan close to normal. 2. Does not require a lifetime of immunsuppressive drugs, so it is not trading one treatment for another (but a couple of operations, or a short course of drugs is OK).

This is Joshua’s personal definition of a cure; yours may differ. This is the cure Captixbio is targeting and believes the IMITA® technology can deliver – whilst also taking away all the things Type 1 patients have told us they don’t want in their lives. Please Contact Us if you would like to share your story and tell us what a cure would look like for you.

Cells as Medicine

Captixbio’s IMITA® device relies on enhanced cell delivery to resolve the challenges associated with lifelong immuno-suppression and shortage of donor islets for the treatment of Type 1 Diabetes using “cells as medicine”.

Captixbio is collaborating with its research partners to develop the state-of-the-art implantable medical device, IMITA®, for the effective delivery of immuno-protected cell therapies enabling cell therapy for diabetes, and other disorders, to move into the mainstream. The IMITA® design incorporates immuno-protective membrane technology that protects implanted cells from the patient’s own immune system, allowing implanted islets to function as they do in non-diabetic individuals. 

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Captixbio’s IMITA® device, is a permanently implanted device, designed to optimise access to the vascular supply and carry a replenishable payload of therapeutic islet cells within a novel immuno-protective membrane. The IMITA® device is safely and securely implanted using standard surgical techniques where it works to enhance the microenvironment for infused therapeutic islet cells, promoting long-term function to stabilise the patient’s blood glucose levels. A truly multidisciplinary treatment strategy, the IMITA® concept combines orthopaedic techniques with cell therapy and physical immuno-protection to deliver a functional, “bio-artificial” pancreas that removes the need for lifelong systemic immuno-suppression, potentially delivering a curative outcome for Type 1 diabetes.

Image source: Morgan and Richardson (2018) Diabetologia DOI 10.1007/s00125-018-4731-y