Stem Cell Transplant Reverses Diabetes in World's First
In a world first, Type 1 diabetes has been reversed in a 25-year-old woman in China after she received a transplant of reprogrammed cells from her own body.
The woman began producing her own insulin less than three months after receiving the transplant in 2023. The results, published a year later in the journal Cell show that the woman no longer needs to inject insulin.
Type 1 diabetes is a condition where the body can't make insulin, a hormone that helps control blood sugar levels. This happens because the immune system attacks and destroys insulin-producing cells in the pancreas by mistake.
Without insulin, sugar stays in the blood and cannot enter the body's cells to provide energy, so people with Type 1 diabetes need to inject insulin every day to manage their blood sugar levels.
However, cell biologist Hongkui Deng and his colleagues decided to try something that had never been done before.
In a 2023 trial, the scientists extracted cells from three people with Type 1 diabetes, including the 25-year-old woman, and returned those cells to a pluripotent state, in which they can become any kind of cell in the body. Such pluripotent cells are called stem cells.
The scientists used these stem cells to create groups of cells that can produce insulin and then injected these groups of cells into the patient's abdomen.
More than a year after her transplant, the woman from Tianjing, China, told Nature, "I can eat sugar now."
And she says she now enjoys a variety of foods, particularly hotpot. Her blood sugar levels remain stable for 98% of her day, and she no longer requires insulin injections.
James Shapiro, a transplant surgeon and researcher at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, told Nature, "They've completely reversed diabetes in the patient, who previously required substantial amounts of insulin."
According to Nature Deng said the results of the other two patients in the trial are "also very positive" and hopes to trial the stem cell transplant method on another 10 to 20 patients after November 2024.
