The collaboration with JDRF and LCT for the Phase II trial of DIABECELL?® is part of JDRF's innovative Industry and Discovery and Development Partnership program. Through the program, JDRF partners with pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device businesses that seek to develop drugs, treatments, technologies, and other therapeutics leading to a cure, reversal, or prevention of type 1 diabetes and its complications. To date, JDRF has made 27 industry grant awards to support a variety of strategic type 1 diabetes research projects since the IDDP program was established in 2004.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which a person's pancreas stops producing insulin, a hormone that enables people to get energy from food. Type 1 diabetes strikes children and adults suddenly, and lasts a lifetime. People with type 1 diabetes must take multiple injections of insulin daily or continuous infusion of insulin through a pump to survive. Intensive insulin treatment to normalize blood glucose and prevent future eye, kidney, nervous system and cardiovascular complications can sometimes result in hypoglycaemic unawareness, a loss of the normal stress response to low blood glucose levels. People with type 1 diabetes and hypoglycaemic unawareness feel no warning symptoms when their blood glucose levels drop to low levels that can impair consciousness and lead to accidents and coma. (www.diabetesnet and www.diabetesselfmanagement)

DIABECELL?® is LCT's treatment designed to normalise the lives of people with insulin-dependent diabetes. DIABECELL?®comprises encapsulated porcine insulin-producing cells (islets) that are implanted into the abdomen of patients using a simple laparoscopic procedure, and work by self-regulating and efficiently secreting insulin in the patient's body. LCT's breakthrough proprietary encapsulation technology means that patients receiving DIABECELL?® treatment do not require immunosuppressant drugs after implantation.

SOURCE Living Cell Technologies Limited