Based on the statistics by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are 29.1 million people in the United States are believed to have diabetes. And these diabetes patients must depend on insulin shots. However, the latest clinical breakthrough developed by Harvard University researchers suggests the use stem cells in treating the disease.
According to a Washington Post report, scientists announced a breakthrough that could liberate millions of diabetic patients someday from a lifetime of insulin shots. The discovery, described in the Cell journal and headed by stem cell researcher Douglas Melton, is a method of growing billions of precious insulin-secreting cells collectively using human stem cells.
As reported by the International Business Times, the latest clinical breakthrough has successfully cured mice with diabetes for six months and counting. And the study is moving on to primate trials before testing is done on humans. If the clinical trials are successful, it could mean the end of insulin injections.
A co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Melton, whose son and daughter have type 1 diabetes, said that the resulting cells of the latest clinical breakthrough were exquisitely accurate in producing the amount of insulin needed by a patient.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that affects those who develops it for life. The immune system destroys beta cells in the pancreas where insulin is produced. And people with type 1 diabetes must depend on daily insulin shots to control their blood sugar. However, the injections are much less accurate than the body's own metabolism which often leads to nerve damage, loss of limbs and blindness.
But with the latest clinical breakthrough, which is able to develop into a series of different kind of cells, researchers said that the new method could regulate a diabetic's blood sugar without any other form of treatment.
Nowadays, cell therapy has become one of the most promising ways of diabetes treatment in those with Type 1 of the disease. In which the body lacks insulin-producing cells in the pancreas and is typically diagnosed in children and young adults. An increasing number of patients have been successfully treated through transplanted cells from cadavers in the recent years.
However, the new clinical breakthrough which will be able to replace insulin shots has a certain barrier. Researchers said that the roadblock has been the supply of cells. They have proved to be extremely complicated to be produce artificially. And they are so difficult to gather from cadavers that so far, less than 1,000 patients are estimated to have undergone the procedure.
Diabetes researchers firmly believed that the difficulties in the latest clinical breakthrough to treat diabetes were attainable. And they were already talking about what needed to happen after they reached that next innovative milestone in the study that could lead to an insulin-free treatment.
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