- Lab-grown cells are designed to take over the function of the pancreas, experts say
- Researchers have described the new technique as a “game changer.”
A revolutionary new treatment for type 1 diabetes could be on the horizon, which involves growing insulin-producing cells in a laboratory and transplanting them into a patient’s arm.
Currently, sufferers of the condition (of which there are around 400,000 in the UK) must regularly monitor their blood sugar levels and take insulin when necessary.
But researchers believe a new procedure could free patients from the need to constantly monitor their condition.
Its lab-grown ‘islet’ cells are designed to sit just under the skin and allow the arm to take on the role of the pancreas, the organ that normally produces insulin but does not function properly in type 1 diabetes.
A clinical trial involving transplanting islet cells from human donors into the forearms of eight people with the condition is currently underway.
People with this type of diabetes, of which there are around 400,000 in the UK, have to regularly monitor their blood sugar levels and inject insulin when necessary, but this new technology could change that.
In recent decades, a small number of people have had insulin-producing cells injected into the portal vein, which carries them to the liver.
But there are supply problems and the new technique, described by experts as a “potential game changer”, would be much less invasive.
However, testing on a much larger scale would be needed before it could be implemented.
It is being developed by Minutia, a biotechnology company working with technology developed at the University of California, San Francisco and Duke University.
The long-term goal is to be able to take stem cells, which have the potential to become almost any other type of cell, and turn them into insulin-producing “islets” that could be transplanted into the arm.
The company is also developing a type of ‘nanosensor’ that is inserted inside the transplanted cells and that could give an early warning if the recipient rejects the transplant.
Katy Digovich, CEO and co-founder of Minutia, said: “We know that it is now possible to reverse type 1 diabetes with stem cell-derived insulin-producing cells, and we also know that we can transplant insulin-producing cells into the forearm and have them survive.
‘We are going to do everything in our power to make it work. But this is difficult.’
Dr. Digovich was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of six, but her decision to research the disease came after spending time in Africa with the Clinton Health Access Initiative.
During her time there, people were often surprised to learn that she, an athletic, nearly 6-foot-tall former college basketball player, was living with type 1 diabetes, a diagnosis in many African countries that often results in stunted growth, amputations and high mortality.
“In the end, I got really angry and the switch flipped,” he said. ‘If I had been born there, I would be dead. That really hit home for me.
“I took stock of my career and jumped into the diabetes space trying to create the type of transplant I want in my own body.”
Dr. Matthias Hebrok of the Technical University of Munich and co-founder of Minutia said that transplanting islets from the pancreas of a deceased person is an established treatment that works well, but there is a chronic shortage of donors.
“I think cells derived from stem cells are a revolution,” he said. “Of course, we are in the early stages… but we could generate as many cells as we wanted to treat a huge number of patients.”
The work was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference, held in Denver this week.