Diabetes Center Facts
- A team of UCSF investigators cloned the gene that produces human insulin in 1979; our clinical researchers coordinated the first multi-center clinical trial of human insulin in the 1980s.
- In 1981, UCSF co-discovered embryonic stem cells that are widely believed to have benefits for diabetes and numerous other diseases.
- UCSF was one of the first institutions to demonstrate that elevated blood sugar levels caused complications, helping to pioneer the intensive glucose control strategies now utilized throughout the world.
- UCSF is home to the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN), the international consortium of researchers working together to establish new treatments for diseases of the immune system including type 1 diabetes.
- An experimental antibody developed by Center Director Dr. Jeffrey Bluestone, anti-CD3, was embraced by private industry in the fall of 2007; it is the furthest that an exclusively type 1 therapy has progressed in drug development and commercialization.
- Our Islet and Cellular Transplantation Center is one of the few certified “Good Manufacturing Process” (GMP) facilities in the world. We continue to conduct clinical trials in islet transplantation using insulin-producing islets from cadaver organs.
- Three scientists in the Diabetes Center are members of the National Academy of Sciences, one of America's highest scientific honors reserved only for the most accomplished researchers.
- The Diabetes Teaching Center, founded in 1978, is one of the country's oldest diabetes education programs, and remains among the most innovative.
- An estimated 20% of all hospital patients at the UCSF Medical Center have diabetes.
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