UVA Artificial Pancreas Team Receives $3.4 Million Grant; Technology Aims To Transform The Lives Of Type 1 Diabetics

A high-tech project at the Center for Diabetes Technology at UVa to turn an ordinary smart phone into an artificial pancreas that could transform the lives of people with type 1 diabetes has received a $3.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The Center for Diabetes Technology Team at UVA is part of a worldwide Artificial Pancreas Consortium working to bring a safe and high-tech Closed Loop System to Americans with Type 1 diabetes in the next few years!

The money will fund a new network approach to artificial pancreas design using distributed computing between local and Cloud systems that will allow real-time adjustment of insulin delivery based on the individual’s needs. The grant will also fund three clinical trials at the University of Virginia and at Stanford University that will advance the project toward its final goal of offering people with type 1 diabetes – in which the body does not produce enough insulin – an automated way to monitor and regulate their blood sugar.

“This project approaches the artificial pancreas not as a single device but as a network of local and global services working seamlessly together towards the optimal control of diabetes,” said Boris Kovatchev, PhD, of the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the Center for Diabetes Technology.

The artificial pancreas was developed at the School of Medicine by a team of researchers led by Kovatchev, the director of the UVA Center for Diabetes Technology, and Patrick Keith-Hynes, PhD. The device consists of a reconfigured smart phone running advanced algorithms, linked wirelessly with a blood glucose monitor and an insulin pump, and communicating with Internet services in real time.

The system’s developers intend for it to monitor and regulate blood-sugar levels automatically, report to a remote-monitoring site and link the user with assistance via telemedicine as needed. This would save users from having to stick their fingers to check their glucose levels multiple times a day and eliminate the need for countless syringes to inject insulin manually. The physicians on the team – Bruce Buckingham, MD, of Stanford, and UVA’s Stacey Anderson, MD, and Sue Brown, MD – have tested the artificial pancreas system in successful outpatient trials in Virginia, California and in Europe.

University of Virginia Press Release

Autoimmune Disorders: A Definition

An autoimmune disorder is a condition that occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys healthy body tissue.

Normally the immune system’s white blood cells help protect the body from harmful substances, called antigens. Examples of antigens include bacteria, viruses, cancer cells, toxins, and blood or tissues from another person or species. The immune system produces antibodies that destroy these harmful substances. In patients with an autoimmune disorder, the immune system can’t tell the difference between healthy body tissue and antigens. The result is an immune response that destroys normal body tissues. With autoimmune disorders, the immune system reacts to normal body tissues that it would normally ignore.

What causes the immune system to no longer tell the difference between healthy body tissues and antigens is unknown. One theory is that some microorganisms (such as bacteria or viruses) or drugs may trigger some of these changes, especially in people who have genes that make them more likely to get autoimmune disorders.  There are more than 80 different types of autoimmune disorders. Here is a very small list of diseases that fall into the autoimmune category:

• alopecia areata
• autoimmune hemolytic anemia
• autoimmune hepatitis
• Crohn’s disease
• dermatomyositis
• diabetes (type 1)
• Graves’ disease
• Guillain-Barré syndrome
• multiple sclerosis
• psoriasis
• psoriatic arthritis
• rheumatoid arthritis
• systemic lupus erythematosus
• thyroiditis

For more complete information about Autoimmune Disorders, check out the National Institutes of Health website. It’s a great place to start your research.