Prof Phil O’Connell, director of the Westmead Millennium Institute for Medical Research’s Centre for Tranplantation and Renal Research, is part of a select team of Australian researchers that has just received a $10 million NHMRC grant from the Australian Government to work on a cure for diabetes.
Already Prof O’Connell’s team can count successes, including allowing Blacktown greenkeeper Stuart Hillier to tuck into Christmas pavlova, an exceptional treat after 40 years of living with diabetes.
Mr Hillier is one of five people in Australia, and ten people worldwide, who have been cured of diabetes using experimental therapy being investigated by Prof O’Connell’s team.
This tiny handful of pioneers were injected with insulin-producing islets from organ donors. They are now permanently off insulin injections and restrictive diets. “This is our first major milestone,” says Prof O’Connell.
The new NHMRC grant will build on this ground-breaking work and look at causes, treatment and prevention of Type I diabetes.
The team brings together world-renowned Australian researchers who are looking at the role of genetics and autoimmunity that causes diabetes, and the use of pigs to grow replacement insulin-producing cells as a novel treatment for diabetes. Prof O’Connell’s role is in the transplantation and treatment aspects of the program.
“The real aim is to prevent people developing diabetes in the first place. Currently the disease rates are going up, not down.”
Scientists will seek to identify who is at risk, either for genetic or environment reasons, develop more treatments and design interventions that will prevent those people from getting the disease.
Prof O’Connell will work with St Vincent’s Research Institute, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, and the West Australian Medical Research Institute.
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