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Trial of Intranasal Insulin Vaccine Shows Promise for Diabetes Prevention
L.C. Harrison, M.C. Honeyman, C.E. Steele, N.L. Stone, in collaboration with E. Sarugeri, E. Bonifacio, Department of Internal Medicine, Istituto Scientifico San Raffaele, Milan, Italy; J.J. Couper, Department of Endocrinology, Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Adelaide, Australia; P.G. Colman, Department of Diabetes and Endocrinology, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Parkville
Professor Len Harrison and Dr Margo Honeyman in the Division of Autoimmunity and Transplantation, and Associate Professor Peter Colman in the Department of Diabetes and Endocrinology, Royal Melbourne Hospital, reported results of a trial of an intranasal insulin vaccine in children at high risk for type 1 diabetes. In this autoimmune disease, the body’s immune system attacks the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Harrison and colleagues had shown in a mouse model that although insulin itself is a target of the immune attack when administered to the mucous membranes as a vaccine it activates protective immunity and prevents diabetes. In the trial, 38 children were treated weekly for six months and followed up for more than five years. Intranasal insulin was shown to be safe and to stimulate changes in immunity to insulin similar to those observed in the mice. The trial is the first to document an effect of a self-protein administered as a vaccine to the mucosal immune system in humans. A large, multi-centre trial, jointly funded by the National Health and Medical Council and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation through the Diabetes Vaccine Development Centre, will determine if the vaccine prevents diabetes in at-risk children.
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