[ 2014-10-10 ]

Scientists close to a cure for diabetes
A cure for diabetes is within reach after
scientists developed a treatment that eliminates
the need for sufferers to inject insulin.

The therapy involves a one-off transplant of
laboratory-grown pancreatic cells, which
scientists have finally succeeded in producing in
large enough volumes to be able to treat patients.
The cells worked normally for many months when
implanted into mice, and the first human patients
should undergo the treatment in the next few
years.

The breakthrough by Harvard scientists was hailed
yesterday as a medical advance potentially as
significant as the advent of antibiotics.

Jose Oberholtzer, an expert in transplantation at
the University of Illinois at Chicago, predicted
the development would “leave a dent in the
history of diabetes”.

About 400,000 people in Britain have type 1
diabetes, including 30,000 children. The
breakthrough could also help 10 per cent of
Britain’s three million type 2 diabetes
sufferers.

The advance is the culmination of 23 years of
research by the Harvard scientist Doug Melton, who
began working on type 1 diabetes when his son,
Sam, had the condition diagnosed in childhood.

Professor Melton said yesterday that his team was
now just one step away from the finish line,
adding: “It was gratifying to know that we could
do something that we always thought was possible,
but many people felt it wouldn’t work.

“If we had shown this was not possible, then I
would have had to give up on this whole approach.
Now I’m really energised.”

Chris Mason, professor of regenerative medicine at
University College London, said that if confirmed
in a clinical trial the impact on diabetes would
be “a medical game-changer on a par with
antibiotics and bacterial infections”. The
scientists are now in the last stages of animal
testing in non-human primates.

Type 1 diabetes, which normally begins in
childhood, is an autoimmune disease in which the
body kills off all its pancreatic beta cells. The
cells produce insulin, which regulates blood
sugar. Without beta cells, the body’s sugar
levels fluctuate wildly, meaning that patients
need to monitor glucose and typically inject
insulin several times each day.

In a study, published today in the journal Cell,
Professor Melton’s team used embryonic stem
cells and adult cells that had been genetically
“rewound”.

Both these cell types have the ability to turn
into any cell type in the body, but require the
right biochemical environment to be “coaxed”
down a particular developmental route. Scientists
have struggled for years to get the set-up right
to produce the volumes of pancreatic cells that
would be necessary for clinical use.

Professor Melton’s team appears to have cracked
this problem by identifying an efficient way to
turn both stem cell types into beta cells.

When the cells were tested in the laboratory, they
produced insulin, responded to glucose and
appeared to work normally for many months when
implanted in mice.

Crucially, a single production line of cells could
be used to treat all patients, rather than each
person needing their own genetically matched
treatment, the study suggests.

Before being transplanted into the mice, the cells
were placed in a porous capsule, which allowed
insulin to diffuse out, but protected the cells
from attacks by the body’s immune system. This
eliminated the need for genetic-matching to
patients, meaning that cells could be produced on
an industrial scale and used in patients without
the risk of immune rejection.

A further advantage would be that the capsule of
cells could be quickly removed and replaced if it
stopped working.

Although insulin injections help to keep glucose
levels broadly in check, they do not match the
body’s fine tuning, and this lack of control can
eventually lead to complications from blindness to
the loss of limbs.

Richard Elliott, of Diabetes UK, said that the
treatment could “transform” the lives of
people with the condition, although it was likely
to be years before the cell-based therapy could be
used routinely. “It could mean they no longer
need to use insulin, which would be a historic
breakthrough,” he added.

The treatment could also help the 10 per cent of
patients with type 2 diabetes who rely on insulin
injections. Type 2 diabetes, which is diet related
and affects about 3 million people in the UK,
occurs when the insulin cells stop working
properly or when the body stops responding
normally to insulin.

The discovery of a new type of “good” fat made
in the body could help to prevent and treat type 2
diabetes. The previously unidentified lipid
molecules increase insulin sensitivity and blood
sugar control. Unlike omega-3 fatty acids found in
oily fish, the good fat named fatty acid hydroxyl
fatty acids, or FAHFAs, are molecules found in fat
cells as well as other cells throughout the body.


The NHS estimates that in England there are 3.1
million people over 16 with diabetes but by 2030
the figure is expected to rise to 4.6 million,
with nine out of ten sufferers having type 2
diabetes. The new findings, made by a team of
scientists from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center in Boston and the Salk Institute in
California, was published online by the journal
Cell.

Source - The Times(UK)

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