{"id":218585,"date":"2025-07-24T00:03:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T05:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/mum-says-new-diabetes-drug-would-be-kind-of-magic-if-it-works"},"modified":"2025-07-24T00:03:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T05:03:23","slug":"mum-says-new-diabetes-drug-would-be-kind-of-magic-if-it-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/mum-says-new-diabetes-drug-would-be-kind-of-magic-if-it-works","title":{"rendered":"Mum says new diabetes drug would be \u2018kind of magic\u2019 if it works"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/mum-says-new-diabetes-drug-would-be-kind-of-magic-if-it-works.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A world-first human trial of a drug designed to treat the underlying cause of type 1 diabetes has begun in Australia.<\/p>\n<p>Five patients with the condition have already been dosed as part of the trial, including mum-of-two Caecilie Wickstroem Giralde, who was diagnosed last year.<\/p>\n<p>University of Queensland researcher Ranjeny Thomas has spent more than a quarter of a century developing the drug, designed to rebalance the body\u2019s immune response in people with type 1 diabetes, which affects more than 130,000 Australians.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>The immune system starts to recognise insulin-producing cells in the pancreas as something it needs to attack and destroy in people with type 1 diabetes \u2014 one of dozens of auto-immune diseases in which the body starts to attack itself.<\/p>\n<p>Professor Thomas, who is based at UQ\u2019s Frazer Institute, said the experimental drug \u2014 dubbed ASITI-201 \u2014 was designed to retrain the immune system so it no longer attacks the insulin-producing pancreatic cells, known as beta cells.<\/p>\n<p>The drug, given as an injection under the skin, combines fragments of a protein found in the beta cells of people with type 1 diabetes and vitamin D to calm the immune response.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/mum-says-new-diabetes-drug-would-be-kind-of-magic-if-it-works\">Continue reading \u201cMum says new diabetes drug would be \u2018kind of magic\u2019 if it works\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A world-first human trial of a drug designed to treat the underlying cause of type 1 diabetes has begun in Australia. Five patients with the condition have already been dosed as part of the trial, including mum-of-two Caecilie Wickstroem Giralde, who was diagnosed last year. University of Queensland researcher Ranjeny Thomas has spent more than [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}