Paul E. Lacy, 81; Pioneered Cell Transplants to Treat Diabetes
Dr. Paul E. Lacy, who pioneered experimental islet cell transplants to treat Type I diabetes more than three decades ago, has died at the age of 81.
Lacy, who also helped create the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, died Feb. 15 in Zanesville, Ohio, of chronic pulmonary fibrosis.
In 1967, Lacy found a way to isolate and then preserve beta cells, which reside in the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas and are responsible for making insulin. Type I diabetes patients have nonfunctioning islet cells that cannot produce insulin.
Five years later, Lacy performed the first successful islet transplant in laboratory rats.
“To our delight,” he wrote of the experiment, “the transplants in the rats returned blood sugar levels to normal and kept them there permanently.”
After refining the transplant surgery in monkeys and dogs, Lacy began using it to aid people. In 1989, working with Dr. David Scharp, he successfully transplanted islet cells into a diabetic, ending the patient’s 27-year dependence on insulin injections. Two years later, the two doctors reported that five transplant patients were insulin-independent.
Once under the skin, transplanted islet cells act in the same way as insulin-producing cells in a normal pancreas, Lacy explained in 1991 in the journal Science. “They respond to rising glucose levels. When the glucose goes up, they hold the blood sugar at normal limits.”
Early transplants provided only temporary relief, however. The relief sometimes lasted a year, but patients eventually had to resume insulin shots.
The transplant therapy remains experimental and has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Never discouraged, Lacy continued to consult with Scharp -- now with Irvine-based Novocell Inc. -- and others on the project until his death.
“It’s not something you say, ‘I’m going to transplant islets,’ and the next day you transplant islets. That’s malarkey. You need to work it out step by step,” Lacy told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1997.
Born in the farming hamlet of Trinway, Ohio, Lacy earned bachelor’s and medical degrees at Ohio State University and a doctorate in pathology at the University of Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic.
He joined the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis in 1955 and taught pathology and conducted research there for 40 years. From 1961 to 1985, he was chairman of the department of pathology. He was also affiliated with the school’s Barnes & Allied Hospitals in St. Louis, where many of his transplants were performed.
In 1970, Lacy helped Lee Ducat create the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (now Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) and worked diligently to raise money and attract young medical personnel to diabetes research.
Type I, or insulin-dependent, diabetes is often called juvenile diabetes because patients develop it early in life. Type II diabetes, which often can be treated with oral medication in combination with diet and exercise, more commonly begins in middle age.
Lacy’s wife of 43 years, Ellen, died in 1998. He is survived by his second wife, Bonnie; two sons, Paul Jr. of Stillwater, Minn., and Steven of Cambridge, Mass; four stepchildren, John E. Starner of Zanesville, Sheryl Williams of Cold Springs, Ky., Rebecca McInerney of Coshocton, Ohio, and Brenda Lepi of Nashport, Ohio; and 10 grandchildren.
