Going into my tour of the Diabetes Research Institute, I did not know a lot about the DRI and the research that was going on. I knew that they were fully dedicated towards research and finding a cure and that if you are a mouse with diabetes, then that’s the best place to go for some help. I’ve said before that even though I advocate for diabetes, cure and help until we find a cure, I do not understand the scientific and medical background of everything. I get confused by the long and confusing names. The DRI did a great job of breaking down what they were talking about. I’ve spoken to scientist before and understood nothing, I must say that they explained it their way and then broke it down for myself, my mom, dad and Amanda.
The first area that we went to for a tour was in this secret, James Bond looking room. I thought it was just a wall and then they hit a button and the wall slid over and a scientist walked out. If I get names wrong in here, please correct me. In this room, they were using a multi-million dollar microscope that allows you to see into the eye of a small animal to see how the implanted Islets are being treated by the immune system. Once again, for more details on any of these things I speak about, I encourage you to go to the links I provide to the DRI to get further details. I will only explain what I understand. When something new is put into your body, your immune system automatically tries to determine if it’s you or an intruder. Once it realizes it’s not you, it will attack and eliminate whatever it is. This microscope allows scientists to see how this process takes place. Before this technology was available, they could not get an accurate view of how this happens. The scientists continued to stress that no matter how hard you try, you cannot replicate the real thing with a petri dish. They know that they must do something to protect these Islets.
And with that, we were taken to another room. This is where we met Dr. Cherie Stabler. Her focus is on tissue engineering and developing islet encapsulation devices. An islet huh? Well, we had just learned that once the islets are transplanted, they are attacked and very few of them actually survive to even do anything of any good. There are some serious medications that exist to try and help prevent and slow these attacks down, but they could potentially harm other parts of your body, so not everybody can handle the drugs. What Dr. Stabler is focused on is creating a “home” for the islets to be safe in. A barrier between them and the immune system that is trying to destroy it. There is an area near the stomach that would be a perfect home to transplant these islets, so all the different departments of the DRI are working together to get this done.
As a side note, and a pretty serious one, Amanda started to look very pale at this time and she told me she needed water, but there were no fountains around at that time. Keep in mind that we were standing for nearly an hour now and it was hot in there. We went into Dr. Stabler’s office to see images of what she was speaking about and as we left, Amanda grabbed ahold of my dad and I and she started to fade out. And then she passed out for a moment. This completely freaked me out because it had never happened before. She grabbed some water and a snack and she sat in the lobby with my mom for the rest of the tour. She really wanted to see the rest and didn’t want me to not see the rest, so she rested downstairs with my mom. Luckily she felt perfectly fine and some blood pressure tests are in the near future. Now, back to the tour that my dad and I continued on.
During this time, I put the iPad away because I had my hand on my phone making sure that Amanda was ok. We went to take a walk past the area that the Ricordi Chamber is used when a pancreas is received from a recently deceased donor. At this particular time there was no work going on in this room because there was no recent pancreas to extra islets from. The next room that we visited did not have anybody in there either. There was a going away part for one of the scientists and it was around lunch time that we were doing our tour, so I was not upset about that, it was totally understandable and acceptable. We made a quick stop to the stem cell research lab, which is the one area that I did not take enough notes to fully understand everything, so I will need to do a little more research on that section of the DRI.
One of our final stops was to the lab or Antonello Pileggi, M.D, Ph.D. Antonello was very passionate about his work when he was speaking to my father and I. A lot of what he was talking about are things that we had discussed with others throughout the day. Which drove a great message to me, that everybody is on the same page and that everybody is sharing information with everybody else. This was the room that had actual live mice in there. There were not any
studies with the mice going on at that current time. One thing that was brought up during the conversation was how in some areas of research, they are trying to figure out exactly how Cancer works because, the immune system does not attacked and destroy Cancer cells. So if they are not destroyed, then why not, and how can that possibly be used to help with the cure of diabetes.
The very end of the tour was basically just a summary of everything that is going on. During this time, when everything was wrapping up, Dr. Camillo Ricordi walked by on the phone, but had the opportunity to shake his hand, what a privilege. Like I mentioned several times, I recommend that you go to the Diabetes Research Institute’s website and learn as much as possible about the different studies going on. If you are every in the Miami area, then please reach out to the DRI beforehand and schedule a tour, it took less than 2 hours. Also, I highly recommend that you sign up to be a DRInsider and receive up to date information from the DRI. More to come tomorrow.
***Disclosure: I was not paid in any way be the Diabetes Research Institute to attend this tour, to write posts about it, or to include links. These are my opinions and thoughts based upon the information that I was provided during my tour. I am not a doctor, a scientists, or any form of medical professional.***
