A medical researcher and doctor of medicine at Northwestern University, , Dr. Richard Burt focuses on trials and studies in the field of stem cell therapy. Dr Burt reported the results of the first ever trial of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for type 1 diabetes mellitus in JAMA in 2007 and again in 2009. In this study that Dr Burt designed for the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, all patients became free of insulin and had a marked improvement in C peptide which is a marker for increase is islet cell mass after HSCT. The study was done on 21 patients who remained in remission on no insulin for variable periods of time, and even to this day 13 years later, a small number of patients remain insulin free. Dr Burt and the University of Sao Paulo team have focused on changes in the patients immune system after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation to understand why a few patients stay in a long-term remission but others relapse. The patients who maintain remission have less cytotoxic effector cells and greater T regulatory cells. This careful follow-up research will open the door to even safer and broader cell therapy manipulation to treat diabetes.
