Harvard scientists have announced an insulin breakthrough for millions of people suffering from diabetics after megs of insulin-producing beta cells were generated in the lab from human embryonic stem cells.
The pioneering technique, which was published in the journal Cell on Thursday, could provide treatment for about 347 million people living with type 1 diabetes. It could also provide more insight into ways of permanently curing the hereditary illness.
"For decades, researchers have tried to generate human pancreatic beta cells that could be cultured and passaged long-term under conditions where they produce insulin. Melton and his colleagues have now overcome this hurdle and opened the door for drug discovery and transplantation therapy in diabetes, said Elaine Fuchs, the Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor at Rockefeller University.
"The current treatment of diabetes which requires external daily intakes of insulin is very stressful to the patients because they do not know when they are likely to die," says Dr. Vishal Goyal of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative.
However, thanks to the insulin breakthrough by stem cell researcher Douglas Melton and his team, diabetics need to undergo just a transplant of the newly manufactured cells. These cells would read the level of sugar in the blood and release the exact amount of needed insulin hormone .
"They had to go through an awful lot of trial and error to get those," said Jeanne Loring, an official of The Scripps Research Institute's Center for Regenerative Medicine. She went on to say that " the proof will be in how well this protocol works for people in other laboratories."
After observing improvements in mice with type 1 diabetes who were given these cells, the stem cell researchers from Harvard university are convinced of the revolutionary nature of this insulin breakthrough. Reports indicate that the cells were able to control blood sugar levels and treated the disease for months.
For the insulin breakthrough, "the next important challenge will be to find ways to maintain these cells inside the body so they are protected from the immune response and have long-term function," Dr Gillian Morrison of Edinburgh University told the BBC.
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