Alexa Brenner has been struggling with juvenile diabetes all her life. The 15-year-old was diagnosed when she was 14 months old, which has changed not only her life but also her family’s.
“This is a 24/7 disease the whole family is part of, as it is a constant vigilance of monitoring blood sugars,” said her mother, Georgia Spiropoulos.
After nine years of daily insulin shots, Alexa switched to a pump five years ago that calculates her insulin needs. While the pump has made her symptoms management much easier, she still has to use a catheter several times a week and be very careful about her eating habits.
Since she was 5 or 6 years old, Alexa wanted to help other kids like her, so she began raising money to help fight the disease and find a cure. In 2008, she even received a service award through the Prudential company.
“You have this thing to worry about for your entire life. It’s not a cold, it won’t go away,” Alexa said. “You have to carry so much extra stuff with you when you go places because if you are low, you have to have food, and if you are high, you have to have insulin. It’s a lot of work.”
Mom has been equally committed to finding a cure. She was on the board of directors for six years for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and she has been learning everything she could about the latest research. When she learned about one program at a conference in Orlando, Fla., Spiropoulos felt she found hope.
The program is called Store-A-Tooth. Offered by Provia Laboratories LLC, it harvests and saves stem cells from wisdom or baby teeth that are already being extracted or coming out naturally. Much like the harvesting of stem cells from umbilical cord blood, dental stem cells are preserved by storing the tissue at low temperatures, and could be used once new stem cell therapies are made available.
“Store-A-Tooth created hope. Now I could wrap my mind around what this research looked like,” Spiropoulos said.
Earlier this year, a study published in the Journal of Dental Research showed that stem cells from teeth can be used to create cells that will produce insulin in a “glucose-dependent manner,” which could be a major step in the development of stem-cell therapies for diabetes.
“This work is further evidence that research into medical as well as dental applications of stem cells from teeth, though early, is steadily progressing toward what we believe will be a new generation of therapies for conditions that impact millions of Americans,” Provia Laboratories Chief Scientific Officer Peter Verlander, PhD, said in a statement after the diabetes study was published.
The idea of harvesting stem cells from teeth has been a bit controversial, Spiropoulos said, and there are other therapies available — but she feels it’s another option that gives her and her daughter control over beating diabetes.
“I no longer have to have someone tell me, this is how long it will take (and) this is what will happen. I have taken her teeth for when the time comes and will have something to work with,” she said. “This gives us hope. The question is not, ‘How could you do it?’ but now, ‘How could you not do it?’ It’s a very affordable way to do this process and a way to be prepared for when this moves forward.”
The duo is hoping to educate others about the option as a way of giving more people a security blanket for the future. Alexa said it feels like she has a second chance, knowing that her stem cells are waiting in a lab for the day when technology progresses toward a cure.
I personally think that stem cells are the way cures will come about,” Spiropoulos said. “It’s not going to be soon but it will come.”
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http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2011/sep/01/gig-harbor-family-finds-diabetes-cure-promise-stem/#ixzz1Wr9h43kZ