People with diabetes cannot produce enough insulin to control their blood sugar level, as a faulty autoimmune response causes the immune system to attack and destroy the insulin-producing beta cells within the pancreas.
Now, a team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, USA, has successfully cured type 1 diabetes in mice for the first time in history, using transformed human cells to maintain stripes disease. This achievement, achieved in just a couple of weeks, symbolizes a breakthrough in the search for a cure for diabetes in humans.
Experts have shown that it is possible to use human pluripotent stem cells to functionally cure diabetes in mice. Treatment contained the disease for at least nine months and up to more than a year in some mice , giving hope to millions of human patients around the world.
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Functional diabetes cure
The work, published in the journal Nature Biotechnology , is based on previous research by the same team. They focused on the use of human pluripotent stem cells, cells that can take the shape of any type of human cell. They used those cells to make pancreatic beta cells, which we know secrete insulin (the hormone that regulates blood sugar).
The new technique is focused on the cytoskeleton, or internal “scaffolding” of the stem cell to direct its differentiation into pancreatic cells. It is the structure that helps cells to maintain their shape and also to move, divide and multiply. This is “a completely different approach,” explains lead researcher Jeffrey R. Millman. “Previously, we would identify various proteins and factors and sprinkle them on the cells to see what would happen. As we better understand the signals, we could make the process less random “. This allows the cell to convert a physical interaction in a biochemical symbol, such as insulin production when a pancreatic beta cell is blood sugar. This system delivers and translates biochemical signals to cells and by improving their understanding of how it works, scientists found a better way to produce only the correct cells.
“These mice had very severe diabetes with blood sugar readings of more than 500 milligrams per deciliter of blood (levels that could be fatal to a person) and when we gave the mice the insulin-secreting cells, in two weeks their levels blood glucose levels had returned to normal and continued that way for many months, “says Millman.
Another significant finding from the research was that the cells used could come from multiple different sources, opening up the capabilities of the revolutionary technique.
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By when a cure for humans?
The prospective cure is still a long way from being able to be used in humans , as many tests still need to be performed to confirm its safety and accuracy. The next step in the research will include testing the cells in larger animals and for longer periods of time before clinical trials can begin. In addition, they will have to find a way to automate the method so that it produces the billions of cells necessary for the millions of people in the world who have type 1 diabetes.
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Referencia: Nathaniel J. Hogrebe et al. Targeting the cytoskeleton to direct pancreatic differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells, Nature Biotechnology (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41587-020-0430-6
