Diabetes: History, Treatment, and Search for a Cure
Class - In Person & Zoom | Available (Membership Required)
Diabetes has been described in the medical literature for millennia, but effective treatments
weren’t developed until 1922 when insulin therapy was first used. This discovery received the Nobel Prize in
Medicine. Since then, insulin-centered research has been a major driving force leading to modern medical miracles
which have received four additional Nobel Prizes. This insulin-based work was the foundation for the entire
biopharmaceutical industry. These advances will be described in layman’s terms, along with the latest diabetes
treatment approaches, including recent work that may well lead to a cure for the disease.
David Harlan
David M. Harlan, M.D., is the William and Doris Krupp Professor of Medicine at the UMass Chan
Medical School, Co-Director of the UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence, and Director of the Breakthrough T1D
New England Center of Excellence. For nearly four decades, his research focused on the mechanisms underlying
type 1 diabetes and developing new disease treatments, ideally curative ones. Frustrated by the current U.S.
healthcare delivery system’s inability to improve diabetes health outcomes, he co-founded Stability Health, LLC, a
company focused on providing diabetes expertise to both patients and their physicians with the goal of improving
outcomes in a cost-effective way.