United States: With the latest progress made by scientists, a team from several institutions in China has been able to cure a female patient with type 1 diabetes by injecting her with programmed stem cells.
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The results of the study are published in the journal Cell, where the experts extracted cells from the patient, reverted them to a pluripotent state, and further programmed them to grow into pancreatic islets. These are later planted back into the female patient’s abdomen.
In the past decade, the progress around stem cells has jumped significantly. Scientists have been able to program them to direct them to become organoids, organs, and biological tissue.
They have also been used to treat health problems such as muscle damage and sickle cell disease, medicalxpress.com reported.
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Stem cells reverse woman’s diabetes — a world first https://t.co/0iz4olRaFP
— nature (@Nature) September 26, 2024
In the latest study, the researchers made use of those cells in order to replace islets lost to an immune response gone wrong, which had resulted in type one diabetes.
In the novel approach, the scientists gathered cells from three of the patients with type one diabetes, where all the cells were inserted back into a pluripotent state and then programmed to grow into pancreatic islets.
The scientists noticed that that changed the conventional approach by exposing the cells to certain molecules rather than introducing proteins.
The procedure took thirty minutes, during which experts inserted 1.5 million islets grown into the abdomen of the first patient, a 25-year-old woman, medicalxpress.com reported.
After 2.5 months, tests showed the patients making enough of their insulin to stop injections.
Furthermore, after a year, the female patient was still making her own insulin. The team of researchers pointed out that the patient was already getting immunosuppressant drugs due to a prior liver transplant.
Therefore, it is yet to be known whether her immune system would copy the type of attack that led her to have type 1 diabetes in the first place.