The studies are among a handful of pioneering trials using stem cells to treat diabetes, which affects close to half a billion people worldwide. Most of them have type 2 diabetes, in which the body doesn’t produce enough insulin or its ability to use the hormone diminishes. In type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks islet cells in the pancreas.
Islet transplants can treat the disease, but there aren’t enough donors to meet the growing demand, and recipients must use immune-suppressing drugs to prevent the body from rejecting the donor tissue.
Stem cells can be used to grow any tissue in the body and can be cultured indefinitely in the laboratory, which means they potentially offer a limitless source of pancreatic tissue. By using tissue made from a person’s own cells, researchers also hope to avoid the need for immunosuppressants.
For example, a 25-year-old woman with type 1 diabetes began producing her own insulin less than three months after the reprogrammed stem cell transplant.She became the first patient with this disease to receive treatment using cell sex tracted from her own body.
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