From The News Wire: Tuesday Three-for

We are off for FFL tomorrow and a side trip to Disney after. YDMV postings maybe strange. I have figured out how to post from my cell phone but thanks to the modern marvel that is Sprint can't post picture from the cell phone because my Sprint picture mail doesn't work right. I called customer service. Somehow after a bunch of transfers I got disconnected. Funny you would think a phone company would figure out how to do telephone customer service....

Anyway

Three stories caught my eye today.

JDRFis funding work at Harvard, encapsulated porcine islets do small human test and an article on Stem Cells.

$3M award from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation funds interdisciplinary research that bridges chemical biology and genomics

Researchers at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT have received a grant to support novel, integrative research aimed at finding ways to encourage the human body to replenish the cells that are missing in type 1 diabetes. Awarded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), the $3M grant will fund work that knits together two interdisciplinary fields, genome biology and chemical biology, to address a fundamental question in human biology: can existing cells be coaxed to regenerate ones that are lost or damaged by disease?
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-07/biom-bie072108.php

Living Cell Technologies Reports Clinical Benefit for All Patients in Diabetes Trial MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA and AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND
Jul 21, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Living Cell Technologies Limited today released further interim results describing clinical benefit in all patients who have received implants of DiabeCell(R), the Company's encapsulated porcine islet cells for the treatment of type 1 diabetes

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/living-cell-technologies-reports-clinical/story.aspx?guid=%7B3860642C-44C4-4620-A9E7-838D5206A9E1%7D&dist=hppr


Novocell Looks to Stem Cells for Diabetes Cure
Monday, July 21, 2008 Ed Baetge and the team of scientists he has led for seven years have had setbacks and disappointing days, but the prospect of finding the cure for Type I diabetes makes their research too tantalizing to give up. Especially now that Baetge believes that they’re on the brink of a medical breakthrough that could stave off the disease in humans. "I’m convinced we’re going to do it," Baetge said. "It’s going to take some time, but we can do this."

Baetge is the chief scientific officer for Novocell, Inc., a San Diego biotechnology company. Earlier this year, Novocell researchers were able to convert human embryonic stem cells into insulin-making cells that stopped diabetes when implanted in mice.

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2008/07/21/economics/892novocell072108.txt

Edited - make it a four-for.

Insulin-producing Cells Can Give Rise To Stem-like Cells In-vitro
ScienceDaily (July 22, 2008) — The question of whether insulin-producing cells of the pancreas can regenerate is key to our understanding of diabetes, and to the further development of regenerative therapies against the disease. Dr Rosenberg from the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) and McGill University together with Dr Bernard Massie from the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal (CHUM) have just concluded that they can.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080721152008.htm