It looks a really interesting concept, but I think Lion is being a bit optimistic. It is in the very early stages of phase 1 trials and the timephase to get through the 3 phases needed before licencing is generally at least 5 years. In the UK you can probably add a year to that because we tend to not licence drugs over here until the States have guinea-pigged them for us!! The 2 newest type-2 meds (Byetta and Januvia) were available in the US for nearly 2 years before NICE approved them for the UK.
Interesting concept indeed, and yes sadly another too quick in the hope stacks as it is soooo early in the testing phases indeed....
But with saying that if it was a sucess I very much doubt if I would choose to be one of hte first users! I'm so used to having insulin and using the pump... It sorts of scares me thinking about something trundleing around my body doing it for me...
I also just realised this neatly gets around the problem of beta cell destruction. I mean - right now you could, in theory, regrow pancreatic beta cells. But what's to stop the immune system from attacking them just like it did when you were diagnosed? This gets around that by not having any beta cells to attack.