An insulin breakthrough involving stem cells might soon make once-rare pancreatic transplants more common for Type 1 diabetics, potentially reversing their condition.
Specifically, a group of scientists from Harvard University have discovered how to grow pancreatic beta cells by the billions — cells that sense blood sugar levels and regulate them using insulin. Diabetics lack these cells, but recent therapies involving transplants from cadavers have shown that placing new beta cells in the body can help kick start a new life for those whose organs have gone dormant.
"This is part of the holy grail of regenerative medicine or tissue engineering, trying to make an unlimited source of cells or tissues or organs that you can use in a patient to correct a disease," Albert Hwa, director of discovery science at JDRF, a New York-based diabetes advocacy group,
told Bloomberg News.
A lack of readily-available beta cells has meant that transplant therapy hasn't been widely available to the vast majority of diabetics, however with the new breakthrough in stem cells supplies could increase dramatically.
Even those suffering from type 2 diabetes, 15 percent of which don't respond to drug treatment, could benefit from the new breakthrough.
"You'll be able to create buckets and buckets of cells. Numbers will no longer be a limitation," said Hwa.
Susan Solomon, chief executive of the New York Stem Cell Foundation, said that scientists at the foundation are already trying to replicate the Harvard team's work, and are using robotics to try and scale up production.
"It’s a new game," she said, noting how significant the breakthrough could be for diabetes sufferers.
The new study was published Thursday in the journal Cell.
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