Researchers are planning to embark on a long and extensive series of clinical trials on a system that helps a patient with type 1 diabetes mellitus regulate his or her blood sugar levels. The system has been dubbed as an artificial pancreas. If the clinical trials produce reasonable data and prove the artificial system to level with the researchers' expectations, it will result to commercial trials and eventually be regulated for consumer use in the US and other nations.
National Institutes of Health has given $12.7 million worth of financial funding to the project. The team is composed of researchers from University of Virginia's School of Medicine, and Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
There will be 240 patients handpicked from some states in the US and Europe. There will be two sets of trials that will last for six months each and will begin early 2016. There six other institutions that have pledged support and collaboration to the project.
1.25 million Americans have type 1 diabetes, says CDC. The disease affects the patient when the body's immune system begins to attack insulin-producing cells in the pancreas and results to the lack or the absence of sugar regulating insulin in the body.
The researchers clarify that the artificial pancreas will not be a replica organ. Instead, it will be an automated insulin delivery system that will mimic a healthy person's glucose regulation.
"The idea is that this can lead to an improved quality of life for individuals with this disease -- not a solution to diabetes, but a means to really extend the quality of their healthful living," says Francis Doyle project co-principal investigator and engineering lead.
The researchers aim to optimize the system to be able to adapt to the uncertainty of the human body which explains why the clinical trials will take longer than other researches. After the long trials, the team hopes to "learn those patterns, to adapt and fine-tune the algorithms, and to improve the overall level of glucose control."