The difference a family can make

At a Spring Point board meeting, Pat Ryan, board president and CEO of Ryan Companies, said something at the end of the meeting that we have heard echoed by others involved in the fight to cure Type 1 diabetes:

“When my daughter was diagnosed with diabetes, I promised her I would find a cure … my daughter is now an adult and I still don’t have that cure for her.”

The Spring Point Project goal is a world without diabetes, a world where monitoring and daily insulin injections are no longer a part of anyone’s life.

If you look at the Spring Point board, it is comprised of a group of successful businessmen. Several are parents of children with Type 1 and these parents are doing everything in their power to make their children’s lives better.

Diabetes is a 24 hour a day, 7 days a week, 365 days – year in and year out – it does not take a break. Many of you who are reading understand this, but we thought it important to reinforce the seriousness of diabetes, the struggles that a family goes through in dealing with the diagnosis, and the successes a family can share – because diabetes affects the whole family. It is important that we find a cure to make life better for the next generation.

The following is based on a conversation Kathy Gold, a Certified Diabetes Educator at the Diabetes Research Wellness Foundation, had with Pat Ryan’s wife, Ann, and daughter, Mo, and what they shared about what life had been like over the past years from both perspectives – living with diabetes and living with someone with diabetes.

Continue reading.

On Sunday, May 5, the Minnesota Star Tribune ran a front page article on human islet transplantation progress focusing on Dr. Bernhard Hering of the University of Minnesota. It told of the tremendous progress and success of human islet cell transplants. The hope is that FDA approval will be forthcoming in the near future. However, as you can see from the short excerpt from the article (below), human islet transplants are limited because of availability.

For now, islet cells must be harvested from the organs of deceased donors. But with only 7,000 pancreas donors a year, and only 2,000 to 4,000 suitable for transplant, there won’t be enough to go around. The U is at the forefront of research that could lead to a ready supply of islet cells, however, either from specially bred pigs that live in sterile pens, or from human stem cells.

Hering said he’s betting on pigs, although the idea takes some people aback. They’re easier to control for quality and consistency, he said.

“We have genetically engineered pigs with very unique islets,” Hering said. “That is a reality. That’s not just science fiction.”

These pigs are the pigs that are produced at Spring Point! Spring Point is at the forefront of ensuring that a ready supply of porcine islets are and will be available as this technology becomes a reality. Spring Point is the only source of FDA “approved” pigs.

Read the entire article from the Minnesota Star Tribune.