The following was written by Tom Brobson, JDRF’s national director of research investment opportunities, who has doubled as a test subject for JDRF’s Artificial Pancreas Project for the past six years.

I’ve been quiet for a day or two so felt it was time to share more impressions of life at Artificial Pancreas boot camp here at UVA.  Want to remind everyone at the start that this round of the trial is to teach us how to use the system all on our own for when we’re home alone (!) and the closed loop is only running in the overnight this time – so trying for great overnight control.  That said here we go…

The picture below is of yet another night of perfection – two sensors on me for this part of boot camp and its amazing how flat these overnight lines are…morning after morning after morning of the same number – so let me think about this…could I get so jaded I’d be bored with having perfect overnight control???  All I’ll say is it might be fun to find out the answer…I can certainly envision myself getting indignant with not having a perfect morning number: “what do you mean I’m not at 100?!?!!!”

The next picture – and I freely share it so I’ve broken my own privacy barrier here – shows my week’s downloaded blood traces where each day overlays the others against a midnight to midnight time frame on the x-axis.  Zero in on the midnight to 8 a.m. period and you’ll see all the perfect nights clustered together and the one night before this boot camp began and how much higher and variable that night is compared to the UVA artificial pancreas system.  Really drives it home doesn’t it?  As does the rest of the day where all my personal foibles and variability re-emerge as I pace on JDRF conference calls or exercise and go low or eat and fly up.  Been quite a week.

I want to close relating a story from last night – last night each of us inductees were expected to turn on the devices, get the bluetooth stuff going, pair them with the phone, confirm all our details on the phone and system and then finally launch the system ON OUR OWN.  This is not an easy task, there are nuances to doing it well – what is the sequence from the pump button to the phone button to the launch, are all the devices tracking with pretty much the exact same time, is it finding the right device (there is a lot of bluetooth in this house right now)…you get the idea.  Lots of moving parts.  And a terrific set of folks are in town from Mt. Sinai learning how this all works so they can run this trial there in NYC (!).  So imagine – three T1Ds sitting around a giant table at 9 at night and then add in 12 professionals standing & sitting with us to make sure we are all learning and doing it right and they are learning/observing too.  Truly this is a group effort – I wish I’d gotten a picture – I’ll try tonight or tomorrow night.  But what that tableau really illustrates is one GIANT thing:

Human trials cost money.  Cold hard cash.

Translating something from the theoretical or from a mouse test to an actual set of humans is like mapping unknown territory.  It takes a lot of work, a lot of eyes, a lot of minds, a lot of talent, a lot of partners, a lot of time and most of all a lot of money.  So with real humility I’d like to thank all you JDRF folks who’ve given at walks, or galas or with a check to make this happen or who have been grass root advocates to get NIH Special Diabetes funding through Congress – you are the engine that drives all our advances.  We wouldn’t be reading of any of the above if first we hadn’t raised the money that sets it all in motion.

From Charlottesville, Virginia and the campus of UVA – a big shout out to all my buddies around the world.

-Tom Brobson