http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3671243.html
(pasted below)

This would be awesome. I don't know if any of you have family members or friends with diabetes but it is hard on everyone. A friend of the family had to have both legs amputated less than a week ago due to complications with diabetes. Looks like some significant progress has been made.

Conservative stab: For all you PETA members... guess you'll have to keep doing it the herbal way.

------------------------------------------------------------------


Scientists reverse monkeys' diabetes with cells of pigs
Findings called a promising step to help humans
By MAURA LERNER
Star Tribune
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. - Researchers at the University of Minnesota said Sunday that they were able to reverse diabetes in monkeys by transplanting insulin-producing cells from pigs.
Some are calling it a milestone that could eventually transform the lives of millions of people. If the research pans out, it could provide an endless supply of healthy cells to replace the ones that don't work in diabetics.
"I would say it's one of the more promising things on the horizon," said Dr. Brian Flanagan of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in New York.
The latest study involved only a dozen monkeys. But it showed "proof of principle" that pig cells can cure animals that are "one step away from humans," said Dr. Bernhard Hering, who led the research as director of the Islet Transplant Program at the University of Minnesota.
Hering hopes to begin human tests in about three years.
In the study, diabetic monkeys were injected with pig islet cells, which make insulin, and survived without insulin shots for up to six months. Some eventually rejected the cell transplants, but others survived for the duration of the study. The results were published online Sunday by the journal Nature Medicine.
It was a breakthrough for scientists, who have been trying for some time to prove that cells could effectively cross species and control diabetes.
One Duluth, Minn., man thinks the research is so promising that he's heading efforts to raise $20 million to build and operate a high-tech facility just to raise pigs for future studies.
"We feel that this is the answer," said Tom Cartier, an insurance executive who has a son, Cory, 23, with diabetes. Two years ago, he helped found the Spring Point Project, a group of like-minded philanthropists, to support Hering's research.
The problem is supply: Each year, only 3,000 to 4,000 donor organs are available. One human pancreas can produce only enough islet cells, at most, for one transplant. Yet 20 million Americans have the disease.
"This overcomes the issue of source, so potentially you have an unlimited supply of islets for transplantation," said Flanagan, one of the research directors at the diabetes foundation. "That is a major hurdle to overcome."
Hering said it will cost about $20 million and take several years to build a facility and raise pigs that are safe for human research.