Seaweed offers hope to diabetes patients

A woman has become the first Australian patient to trial a simple transplant procedure for diabetes which relies on seaweed.

Doctors at Sydney's Prince of Wales Hospital injected Janice Stewart with about 200,000 pancreatic cells from a dead donor after they were placed inside tiny capsules made from alginate, a product of seaweed.

Ms Stewart, of Cromer, on Sydney's northern beaches, expects to return to her job as a nurse at the same hospital less than 24 hours after the procedure.

The 51-year-old has required insulin injections four times a day since being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as a schoolgirl four decades ago, a process she describes as a "pain in the backside".

But research leader Bernie Tuch, of the University of NSW, hopes the transplant will reduce Ms Stewart's insulin requirements.

She is believed to be just the third patient worldwide to undergo the experimental transplant procedure, which overcomes the need for anti-rejection drugs.

The key to the procedure is the microscopic alginate capsules, about 0.3mm in diameter, which contain the insulin-producing pancreatic cells known as islets.

"These capsules have pores, or little holes on their surface, small enough to block immune cells getting in to destroy the islets, or insulin-producing cells, but large enough to allow the entry of nutrients such as oxygen, glucose and so forth," explained Professor Tuch.

In patients with type 1 diabetes, the islet cells which make up about one per cent of the pancreas no longer produce insulin.

Prof Tuch said traditional transplants involving type 1 diabetes patients meant they required immunosuppressive drugs on an ongoing basis to prevent the body rejecting the cells.

Side effects of such drugs can include infection and cancer.

Ms Stewart, who was fully awake for the procedure which was performed in front of the media, said she had never contemplated a traditional transplant because the drugs were often "worse than your disease".

"That really wasn't a consideration," she said.

Ms Stewart said she felt privileged to be the first Australian to have the new procedure.

"It really is such a minor procedure," Ms Stewart said.

"It would not turn anyone off.

"It doesn't feel as if anything's happened except I know it has."

Ms Stewart is the first of six patients in a pilot Australian trial of the procedure, expected to take several years to complete.

Prof Tuch said patients may require two or three such transplants, which doctors hope will eventually allow them to be weaned off insulin injections altogether.

If that is achieved, the procedure is expected to be very cost-effective.

"You're going to be saving not only the insulin costs but basically the costs of potential complications which arise from having higher blood sugar levels than normal," Prof Tuch said.

He said the alginate capsules may also prove useful in other transplant procedures.