Diabetes: Scientists use human cells to cure disease in mice

Authored by indy100.com and submitted by HeinrichTheWolf_17
image for Diabetes: Scientists use human cells to cure disease in mice

Diabetes is a disease that has a huge impact on peoples’ lives.

So far the disease, which is thought to affect over 400 million people worldwide, is understood to be incurable. But researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis have just proved that it is possible to cure diabetes in mice in just a couple of weeks.

IFL Science’s Alfredo Carpineti reports that the researchers used human cells to keep the disease at bay for at least nine months and up to more than a year in some mice. The findings were published in Nature Biotechnology.

The mice were given severe diabetes using a substance known as streptozotocin, but human cells implanted in the animals were able to control their blood sugar levels, curing the disease.

Dr Jeffrey R. Millman, an assistant professor of medicine and of biomedical engineering, said in a statement:

These mice had very severe diabetes with blood sugar readings of more than 500 milligrams per deciliter of blood – levels that could be fatal for a person – 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.

So what does this mean for humans with diabetes?

It’s still far to early to tell whether this means a cure for diabetes is on the horizon. But it’s certainly encouraging to see that some mammals can be cured of the disease, even momentarily.

tqb on March 1st, 2020 at 07:11 UTC »

This article doesn’t address the immune response. Diabetes has been cured for years via an islet cell transplant but of course type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease so the immune system just attacks the new cells; unless taking anti rejection medication. I know a lot of research is going into encapsulation, hopefully that yields results

cinred on March 1st, 2020 at 06:36 UTC »

1) STZ induced death of islet cells is a poor model of T1D. 2) There's almost no better way to destroy implanted foreign cells then to implant them into human. Cell transplants last much much longer in mice than humans. 3) The model shown in the thumbnail looks like Chloë Sevigny

c017smith on March 1st, 2020 at 05:48 UTC »

Some good hearted person should sell the patent for a buck and then watch as people die because they can’t afford the up-charge