New Research Brings Hope to People Living With Type 1 Diabetes

Here’s some exciting news for the millions of people worldwide living with type 1 diabetes. In what is regarded as an extraordinary medical achievement, scientists in China have successfully reversed this condition in a young woman using stem cell technology, as Onlymyhealth  reports. This breakthrough research published in Cell, suggests that the possibility of a cure is on the horizon. 

Type 1 diabetes, once known as juvenile or insulin-dependent diabetes, is a chronic health condition. In people with this affliction, the pancreas makes little or no insulin, the hormone the body uses to enable sugar to enter cells to produce more energy, as the Mayo Clinic explains. 

This form of diabetes is a condition that burdens everyday life. Sufferers have to  manage the amount of sugar in their blood using injected insulin, as well as their diet and lifestyle, to prevent complications, which is why this breakthrough gives so much hope.

Detailing this groundbreaking research
MedicalNewsToday reports on this breakthrough case study entitled “Transplantation of chemically induced pluripotent stem-cell-derived islets under abdominal anterior rectus sheath in a type 1 diabetes patient.” It documents how researchers in China treated a 25-year-old woman with type 1 diabetes using stem cell therapy made from her own cells. 

Science Direct outlines that stem cell therapy (SCT) refers to a range of treatments that all use potent cells of various origins to boost the human body in various ways to facilitate a favorable healing process.

In type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune condition resulting in the destruction of islet cells by the immune system, Medical News Today explains that when the body is unable to create sufficient insulin, this results in the presence of excessively high blood glucose. This can lead to complications including vascular issues that impact eyesight, and can trigger nerve and kidney damage. The patient treated in the research had already undergone two liver transplants and a failed pancreas transplant due to complications from her diabetes.

In the study, researchers at Tianjin First Central Hospital, in Nankai University in Tianjin, China, took adipose (fat) cells from the young woman, and chemically induced them to act as pluripotent stem cells which are cells that can develop into other types of cells. They went on to use these to create islet cells which exist in the pancreas creating insulin, a hormone regulating glucose (sugar) in the bloodstream. 

To put this more simply, as Smithsonian Magazine explains, these scientists reprogrammed this young woman’s own cells into blood sugar-regulating cell clusters. In what is a world first, they then treated her with her own cells in surgery lasting under half an hour, when they  injected some 1.5 million of these treated cells back into her abdomen.

Traditionally, as Business Standard notes, some type 1 diabetes patients undergo islet transplants where insulin-producing cells from deceased donors are placed into the liver. This method, however, is limited by a shortage of donors.

Reasons to be cheerful
The Chinese researchers were delighted to discover that the stem cell-derived islet cells that their patient had been injected with, engrafted inside her abdomen, something they could track with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which they can’t do in the liver. Two and a half months after the procedure, she began regulating her blood sugar naturally, and no longer required additional insulin. As the researchers put it: “ Exogenous insulin-independent glycemic control was restored in the patient,” which is a remarkable achievement. At the one-year mark, she still had no need for insulin injections, and as the Smithsonian Magazine shares, she can now consume sugar, and is enjoying eating everything without endless restrictions. 

Lead author of the study, Dr. Hongkui Deng, a cell biologist at Peking University, Beijing, China, told Medical News Today that since this trial, two more people have been enrolled in the same clinical trial in China, with follow-up checks on all three patients ongoing. 

Commenting on this exciting result, Alberta surgery professor, James Shapiro, himself working on creating insulin-producing islet cells, told Medical News Today that “The beauty of this approach is that they are the patients’ own cells — so organ and tissue rejection is not a concern, and no or far less anti rejection medications are needed.” 

Smithsonian Magazine points out, however, that as the patient was already taking immunosuppressants for her earlier transplant, the scientists are unable to prove that utilizing her own cells in the experimental procedure was the reason for her body’s lack of rejection issues to the transplanted cells, and so more research is needed. Researcher Deng told Tech Explorist that his team is “working on developing cells that can avoid this autoimmune response.”

All the same, congratulating the Chinese team, Professor Shapiro also commented that he is “exceedingly impressed with the stunning results the Tianjin Team achieved in their first patient.” “This is truly incredible,” he added.

No doubt, this breakthrough is set to lead to further exploration of stem-cell-derived islet transplants in treating type 1 diabetes.