Inserting a gene 2.ins.01001 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Inserting a gene into gut cells in mice enabled those cells to take over the pancreas’s job, producing insulin after meals, according to unpublished research announced June 18 in San Diego at the Biotechnology Industry Organization International Convention. The work may offer a novel way to treat diabetes.

"This is the first time that we've engineered a tissue that is not the pancreas to manufacture insulin" in animals, says researcher Anthony Cheung, a molecular biologist and cofounder of enGene, a biotechnology company based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

"It's going to be very beneficial to patients," comments Christopher Rhodes, research director of the Kovler Diabetes Center at the University of Chicago, who enGene asked to critique the research. "It's a very promising approach." Cheung says that he and his colleagues hope to begin safety trials in people by 2010.

People with diabetes don't produce enough insulin to properly control their blood sugar. Often, the pancreatic cells that produce the insulin have become damaged, either from attack by the immune system or from chronic overtaxing because of poor diet.