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As director of the Edmonton Protocol at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Dr. James Shapiro has spent the last two years in a whirlwind of media and scientific attention since it was announced that the twelve diabetics that underwent islet cell transplants under his guidance were effectively cured from diabetes. Since then, many more diabetics around the world have been "cured" from diabetes using the same method used in the Edmonton Protocol, though all patients must still take life-long immunosuppressant drugs to keep their bodies from rejecting the new islet cells.
Trained as a surgeon in Britain, Shapiro worked on islet cell transplants as a student. Years later, Shapiro came to the University of Alberta to continue his research in islet cell transplants witht the goal of one day finding a way to do an effective transplant of islet cells from one pancreas to another.
CureNow: How did you get involved with the islet cell transplant research?
Dr. Shapiro: I was a medical student and in my first year of medical school I knew I wanted to be a surgeon. And I went to work with a surgeon for a year and his interest and his project was with the islet cell transplant. So I was I suppose 19 years old and I had just been in medical school for a year and this was a very interesting project for me. I spent a year working with that and at the end of the year my experiments didn't really work. It was terribly hard work, this was all doing islet cell transplants in rats, and at the end of it I had spent so much time on it, and got so interested in it and read every single paper that I could get my hands on, that I thought that someday I would like to come back to this and see if I could work in people.
How long have you been working in Alberta?
10 years now. When I came here the idea was for me to continue my research in experimental islet transplants to hopefully get involved in a clinical islet cell transplant program and also learn how to do liver transplants. [That was] my other training as a surgeon.
What do you think has been the most important medical development of 2001 in regard to diabetes?
Well I'm biased, of course, probably the islet cell transplant.
What are your personal goals for 2002 with your research?
Well, I want to get more patients transplanted; I want to get more donors available. So all the donors in Canada and in the U.S., I want to make sure we use them for islets whenever possible. And I want to develop newer, safer immunosuppression protocols so there will be less risk for patients.
What is the current focus of the Protocol right now?
Well, we've treated 30 patients. The success rate of 1 year is about 70%. The success rate of 2 years, well, we've just got 6 patients out and 3 of them are off insulin and all the patients are pretty happy.
What do you require of patients who are interested in the transplant?
Well, it's a lot of dedication, you know, the trials that the patients go through. They are very demanding; they have to come for a lot of blood tests and various different kinds of tests. We're hoping, in time, that the number of tests that we have to do can be very much simplified.