When Andrea Thompson’s nine-year-old daughter lost 10 pounds over a very short period of time, she and her husband took her to the doctor. Then their lives changed forever.

Her daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. “It was like, set your alarm, get up every two hours through the night, and wake her up and see that she’s okay. It was a lot of sleepless nights,” says Thompson.

Knowing her daughter was going to have to take insulin for the rest of her life – a life filled with injections, glucose monitors, middle-of-the-night lows, and having to track every bite of food – Thompson began to look for the best way to help diabetics. That’s when she discovered the Diabetes Research Institute Foundation Canada (DRIFCan).

Worth a million – DRIFCan

DRIFCan was established in 2005 to fund the Edmonton Protocol, led by Dr. James Shapiro, Canada Research Chair in Transplant Surgery and Regenerative Medicine. Shapiro’s team has been working with islet cell transplantation, which has proven successful over the last 20 years in improving quality of life for people with hard-to-control diabetes. 40 per cent of patients are now insulin independent for at least five years after the procedure, and just under 30 per cent are free of insulin at 10 years.

Dr. Shapiro’s team is now focusing on stem cell transplants using the patient’s own cells. His team’s strategy is to use beta cells grown from a patient’s stem cells to replace their own damaged beta cells. Using a patient’s own stem cells to make “self-islets” would help the transplanted cells to be accepted by the patient’s immune system and remove the need for anti-rejection drugs.

“If I reflect on the cumulative diabetes research that I’ve been involved with…this is, by far, the most costly, the most ambitious, but also the most exciting project I’ve been involved in,” says Shapiro.

Thompson and her family decided to make a generous, “laser-focused” donation because she feels that’s how she can have the greatest impact. “Finding a charity that targets, specifically, a cure, that was the biggest motivator for us,” she says. 

Thompson is a local advisor in the Vancouver, BC area for Chambers Plan group insurance, and its administrator, Johnston Group, was excited to help share her story and match her contribution through their Advisor Charitable Match Program, which is designed to support charitable organizations that are having a direct impact on their local communities.

Thompson says the research being done on the Edmonton Protocol could easily affect over a million people with diabetes. “When you donate to DRIFCan, that money goes directly to research,” she says. “When you have a child with a debilitating condition like diabetes, all you think of is the cure.”

Advisor Bio: Andrea Thompson is based in Vancouver, BC, proudly offering Chambers Plan employee benefits.