Scientists Find Cure For Diabetes By Making Stem Cells Produce Insulin & Save Millions Of Lives

Approximately 7.3 crore people suffer from diabetes in India, and quite a few slowly suffer and die at the hands of this deadly disease.

Life can get really hard for a diabetic. While following strict diets and struggling hard from sweet cravings, diabetes also brings along several health risks. And doctors have been on a lookout to cure this, and it looks like they¡¯ve finally come across a solution, sort of.

Reuters

First published in journal Nature, researcher Jeffery Millman at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, along with his team have converted human stem cells into insulin-producing cells that they¡¯ve successfully tested out on mice. These cells were able to control sugar levels for nine months.

According to Millman ¡°These mice had very severe diabetes with blood sugar readings of more than 500 milligrams per deciliter of blood ¡ª levels that could be fatal for a person ¡ª and when we gave the mice the insulin-secreting cells, within two weeks their blood glucose levels had returned to normal and stayed that way for many months.¡±

This is not the first time they¡¯re working with stem cells for curing diabetes. Years ago, the researchers discovered how to convert human stem cells into pancreatic beta cells to form insulin. However, it had some limitations. But the newer approach is far more effective.

Millman says, ¡°A common problem when you¡¯re trying to transform a human stem cell into an insulin-producing beta cell ¡ª or a neuron or a heart cell ¡ªis that you also produce other cells that you don¡¯t want..In the case of beta cells, we might get other types of pancreas cells or liver cells.¡±

Reuters

He further added, ¡°The more off-target cells you get, the less therapeutically relevant cells you have.You need about a billion beta cells to cure a person of diabetes. But if a quarter of the cells you make are actually liver cells or other pancreas cells, instead of needing a billion cells, you¡¯ll need 1.25 billion cells. It makes curing the disease 25% more difficult.¡±

The newer technique resulted in fewer off-target cell productions, with the beta cells actually improving function. The technique focuses on the cell¡¯s internal scaffolding, called the cytoskeleton. This is what gives the cell its shape and lets it interact with the surrounding environment.

This enabled researchers to make more beta cells, and those cells performed better in mice, keeping them cured for nearly 9 months.

There is still a lot of research that needs to go to apply a similar strategy to cure human diabetes. They¡¯ll need to test the stem cells for a longer duration in larger and more complex animals to make it ready for a human trial.