Washington, February 8 (ANI): For the first time, it has been that it is possible to cure diabetes in large animals with a single session of gene therapy.
Researchers from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB), led by Fatima Bosch, found that after a single gene therapy session, the dogs recover their health and no longer show symptoms of the disease. In some cases, monitoring continued for over four years, with no recurrence of symptoms.
The therapy is minimally invasive. It consists of a single session of various injections in the animal's rear legs using simple needles that are commonly used in cosmetic treatments. These injections introduce gene therapy vectors, with a dual objective: to express the insulin gene, on the one hand, and that of glucokinase, on the other.
Glucokinase is an enzyme that regulates the uptake of glucose from the blood. When both genes act simultaneously they function as a "glucose sensor", which automatically regulates the uptake of glucose from the blood, thus reducing diabetic hyperglycemia (the excess of blood sugar associated with the disease).
"This study is the first to demonstrate a long-term cure for diabetes in a large animal model using gene therapy," said Fatima Bosch, the head researcher.
This same research group had already tested this type of therapy on mice, but the excellent results obtained for the first time with large animals lays the foundations for the clinical translation of this gene therapy approach to veterinary medicine and eventually to diabetic patients.
The study provides ample data showing the safety of gene therapy mediated by adeno-associated vectors (AAV) in diabetic dogs. The therapy has proved to be safe and efficacious: it is based on the transfer of two genes to the muscle of adult animals using a new generation of very safe vectors known as adeno-associated vectors.
These vectors, derived from non-pathogenic viruses, are widely used in gene therapy and have been successful in treating several diseases.
In fact, the first gene therapy medicine ever approved by the European Medicines Agency, named Glybera, makes use of adeno-associated vectors to treat a metabolic disease caused by a deficiency of lipoprotein lipase and the resulting accumulation of triglycerides in the blood.
Dogs treated with a single administration of gene therapy showed good glucose control at all times, both when fasting and when fed, improving on that of dogs given daily insulin injections, and with no episodes of hypoglycemia, even after exercise.
Furthermore, the dogs treated with adeno-associated vectors improved their body weight and had not developed secondary complications four years after the treatment.
In conclusion, this study paves the way for the clinical translation of this approach to gene therapy to veterinary medicine, and eventually to diabetic patients.
The study was published this week in Diabetes, the principal journal for research on the disease. (ANI)
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