Better Diabetes Treatment can Replace Insulin Injections, Provide 'New Pancreas'

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Islet cell transplantation is a new approach to the treatment of diabetes wherein healthy cells are transplanted to replace damaged pancreatic islet cells. But much like in the case of Type-1 diabetes patients where the immune system attacks the pancreas rendering it ineffective in regulating blood sugar, the immune system also attacks the new cells after the transplant.

Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston Children's Hospital, and several other institutions may have found a way around this obstacle, according to a news release from EurekAlert.  

The researchers were able to come up with a material that could encapsulate the human islet cells before transplanting them without triggering a response from the immune system after the procedure. The novel approach was also shown to have cured diabetes for up to six months in a clinical trial conducted using mice.

According to Daniel Anderson, a Samuel A. Goldblith associate professor in MIT's Department of Chemical Engineering, this new treatment method "has the potential to provide diabetics with a new pancreas that is protected from the immune system, which would allow them to control their blood sugar without taking drugs." Anderson is also a research fellow in the Department of Anesthesiology at Boston Children's Hospital.

Alginate gels from brown algae were used as a material to encapsulate the pancreatic islet cells that were produced from human stem cells using a technique developed by Douglas Melton, a professor at Harvard University.

They created about 800 alginate derivatives for the study and tested them on mice and nonhuman primates. Triazole-thiomorpholine dioxide (TMTD), which is one of the best alginate derivatives, was then tested in diabetic mice with a strong immune system, wrote the Business Standard. 

After the procedure, the cells were able to perform their duties of controlling blood sugar by producing insulin for the duration of the study (174 days).

"The really exciting part of this was being able to show, in an immune-competent mouse, that when encapsulated these cells do survive for a long period of time, at least six months," said Omid Veiseh, a senior postdoc at the Koch Institute and Boston Children's hospital and co-first author of the Nature Medicine paper. "The cells can sense glucose and secrete insulin in a controlled manner, alleviating the mice's need for injected insulin."

Anderson and his fellow researchers will now try to conduct more tests involving their new materials in other nonhuman primates. They are hoping that they can eventually perform the clinical trials among diabetic patients. "Our goal is to continue to work hard to translate these promising results into a therapy that can help people," he said.