https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03129-3
"A 25-year-old woman with type 1 diabetes started producing her own insulin
less than three months after receiving a transplant of reprogrammed stem cells.
She is the first person with the disease to be treated using cells that were
extracted from her own body.
“I can eat sugar now,” said the woman, who lives in Tianjin, China, on a call
with
Nature. It has been more than a year since the transplant, and, she
says, “I enjoy eating everything — especially hotpot.” The woman asked to
remain anonymous to protect her privacy.
James Shapiro, a transplant surgeon and researcher at the University of Alberta
in Edmonton, Canada, says the results of the surgery are stunning. “They’ve
completely reversed diabetes in the patient, who was requiring substantial
amounts of insulin beforehand.”
The study, published in
Cell today, follows results from a separate group of
scientists in Shanghai, China, who reported in April that they had successfully
transplanted insulin-producing islets into the liver of a 59-year-old man with
type 2 diabetes. The islets were also derived from reprogrammed stem cells
taken from the man’s own body, and he has since stopped taking insulin.
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 the
people have type 2 diabetes, in which the body doesn’t produce enough insulin
or is less able to use the hormone. 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."
Via
Fix the News:
https://fixthenews.com/what-is-working/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
