Jennifer Matthews: Noel Wynn looks healthy, but severe nerve damage from diabetes has wreaked havoc on her body.
Noel Wynn: This body has to last, and I am going to do everything I can to prolong my life and prevent anything.
Jennifer Matthews: That's what Diabetes Research Center is on, giving patients the longest, healthiest life possible, and now how to prevent people from getting it.
Dr. Daniel Kaufman of UCLA has developed a vaccine to prevent type 1 diabetes. It slows down the attack on the immune system and saves cells that produce insulin in the pancreas. It worked on mice. Now, the goal is to vaccinate humans.
Dr. Daniel Kaufman: We think the earlier that we can identify the children that are destined to develop diabetes, and you change their immune responses, that they'll be fine for the rest of their lives.
Jennifer Matthews: Across the country at the University of Miami, Dr. Luca Inverardi's goal is to make diabetics not dependent on injecting insulin to stay alive by perfecting a breakthrough procedure called an islet cell transplant.
Dr. Luca Inverardi: Patients require a fraction of the insulin that they needed before the transplant.
Jennifer Matthews: He has run tests on animals implanting this biomechanical mesh piece full of islet cells from a donor. It's safer to just injecting the cells into patient's liver, because they have don't have to depend on heavy of doses of drugs that depress the immune system.
Dr. Luca Inverardi: This could really represent a major advantage for patients.
Jennifer Matthews: With patients like Noel who have learned to live with the disease, but would love the day to come when they didn't have to, this is Jennifer Matthews is reporting.
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