Reports of the Death of Diamyd ' s T1D Intervention Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Remember Diamyd Medical?  I wrote about the company and even interviewed one of the company execs (Peter Zerhouni, who was then Director of Business Development) back in 2010 (see that post athttps://blog.sstrumello.com/2010/05/interview-with-diamyd-medical-ab.html). A year later, I wrote another post about it not being dead yet (seehttps://blog.sstrumello.com/2011/06/teplizumab-and-dpt-1-not-dead-yet.html), but it later appeared to actually be dead, and I basically lost interest.As it turns out, the Swedish biotech firm known as Diamyd Medical isn ' t dead after all! Diamyd Medical was founded by the Swedish entrepreneur Anders Essen-M öller when his daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. After a failure to meet clinical endpoints many had presumed that Diamyd Medical was, for all practical purposes, dead. But as American author Mark Twain once said " Reports of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated " (meaning he wasn ' t really dead). Evidently, the same can be said for Diamyd Medical.The company ’s diabetes vaccine Diamyd is, scientifically speaking, glutamic acid decarboxylase, but most people just refer to that by the acronym GAD. GAD is an enzyme which plays several roles in the human body, including in the brain and the pancreas. As an enzyme, it converts the excitatory amino acid kno wn as glutamate into the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA, which cells use to communicate. But it also has a less helpful role as an autoantigen (an element of self that pr...
Source: Scott's Web Log - Category: Endocrinology Source Type: blogs