- A woman has undergone a stem-cell therapy made from her own cells, to treat her type 1 diabetes.
- Researchers in China discovered the woman did not need to use insulin 75 days after the procedure, and that the stem-cell derived islet cells she was injected with had been engrafted inside her abdomen.
- More people have been enrolled in this trial and other stem-cell therapy trials at several sites around the world.
A woman with type 1 diabetes started producing her own insulin less than 3 months after receiving an injection of a stem-cell derived treatment. She remained free from insulin injections 1 year after treatment.
The case is the first of its kind, and two more people have been enrolled in the clinical trial in China since, researchers involved in the study told Medical News Today.
Hongkui Deng, PhD, lead author of the new study — which appears in CellTrusted Source — and cell biologist at Peking University, Beijing, China, who has previously done groundbreaking work developing induced pluripotent stem cells told MNT that:
“The trial is ongoing and includes three patients in total. After [an] interim analysis of the [data of the] first patient and the submission of this work, the second and third patients were enrolled. Follow-up with these patients is ongoing, as they were sequentially enrolled in accordance with regulatory safety requirements. [A] long-term follow-up of at least 2 years will be conducted.”
Other stem-cell based therapies for type 1 and type 2 diabetes are also currently in development and in trials.
For this case study, researchers based in Tianjin First Central Hospital, Nankai University, Tianjin, China took fat cells from a 25 year-old woman with type 1 diabetes, and chemically induced them to behave as pluripotent stem cells, a type of cell that can develop into other types of cell.
They then used these to create islet cells, which typically exist in the pancreas and create insulin, a hormone that regulates levels of glucose (sugar) in the bloodstream.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition that results in the destruction of these islet cells by the immune system. This means that the body can not create as much insulin as needed which results in chronic, high blood glucose which can lead to complications including vascular problems that affect eye sight, can cause nerve and kidney damage.
The patient in this case study had previously had two liver transplants and a failed pancreas transplant due to complications that had arisen due to her diabetes.
The induced islet cells made from the patient’s own cells were then injected between the skin and abdominal muscles. Researchers discovered that these successfully engrafted in the patient, including growing their own vasculature.
Researchers found that the woman no longer needed insulin injections from around 2 and a half months after they had carried out the procedure, and at the 1-year mark she still had no need for insulin injections.
Before the procedure she produced enough insulin to reach her target glycemic range 43.18% of the time, and 4 months later this increased to 96.2% of the time. She was also shown to have lower glycated hemoglobin, which indicated long-term systemic glucose levels at a non-diabetic level.