Doctors in Shanghai claim to have, “ for the first time in the world », cured a patient’s diabetes by transplanting pancreatic cells derived from stem cells (see iPS cells to treat diabetes?). The 59-year-old man, who suffered from type 2 diabetes for 25 years, has not taken insulin for 33 months, announced the Shanghai Changzheng Hospital. According to the International Diabetes Federation, there are 140 million diabetic patients in China. The doctors published their work in the journal Cell Discovery [1].
Peripheral blood mononuclear cells[2] taken from the patient were reprogrammed into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. These cells then made it possible to reconstitute the tissue of the pancreatic islets in an artificial environment.
The patient had already undergone a kidney transplant in 2017, said Yin Hao, one of the team’s researchers and director of the hospital’s organ transplant center. But he had lost the majority of pancreatic islet function » and depended on multiple insulin injections each day.
The patient received the tissue graft in July 2021. Eleven weeks after the operation, external insulin administration was discontinued. The dose of oral medication to control her sugar levels was gradually reduced, before being completely removed a year later. According to the examinations carried out to monitor the intervention, “ his kidney function is within the normal range », indicates Yin Hao.
In other work, researchers at Kyoto University have developed a method to eliminate ” unwanted cells » pancreatic tissues derived from iPS cells, developed for cellular therapies against type 1 diabetes. They have just published their work in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [3].
[1] Wu J, Li T, Guo M, Ji J, Meng X, Fu T, Nie T, Wei T, Zhou Y, Dong W, Zhang M, Shi Y, Cheng X, Yin H; Clinical Group. Treating a type 2 diabetic patient with impaired pancreatic islet function by personalized endoderm stem cell-derived islet tissue. Cell Discov. 2024 Apr 30;10(1):45. doi:10.1038/s41421-024-00662-3.
[2] Lymphocytes and monocytes (types of white blood cells); Peripheral blood is the blood that circulates throughout the body.
[3] Hideyuki Hiyoshi et al, Identification and removal of unexpected proliferative off-target cells emerging after iPSC-derived pancreatic islet cell implantation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2320883121
Sources: China Daily, Zhou Wenting (05/09/2024); Medical Xpress, Kyoto university (05/13/2024)
