Fluorescent islets transplanted in the abdomen, red indicating insulin and blue indicating cells’ nuclei
DIABETES RESEARCH INSTITUTE/UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI MILLER SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Type I diabetes had rendered a 43-year-old woman dependent on insulin, until doctors restored her body’s ability to produce the hormone with engineered islet cells transplanted into her abdomen, according to a New England Journal of Medicine report published today (May 11). The patient remained insulin-independent one year after her transplant, and as reported by a news release, is part of a continuous clinical trial testing the efficacy of this treatment for diabetes.
In type I diabetes, the body’s immune system attacks insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells—a subtype of islet cells. To restore insulin production and simultaneously curtail an immune response, researchers blended a donor’s islet cells with the patients’ plasma and, together with added enzymes that enable blood clotting, made a “gel-like material that [stuck] to the omentum” within her abdomen, according to the news release.
“The objective of testing this novel tissue-engineered platform is to initially determine ...
