Type 1 diabetes reversed by new cell transplantation technique

[cassidius]

More groundbreaking research funded by the NIH. It's sad to think about how much the US is going to lose with the arbitrary slashing and burning and purging.

[arrty88]

Most research that is pointed towards important things does get funding from NIH. Most research fails. NIH has a bucket of money for every major issue facing the population. Just takes a few PhD's and a hypothesis to write a proposal.

[asciii]

Don't worry they'll take credit for saving this

[KumaBear]

Problem is the funding never gets passed on as a savings to the American consumer who needs the treatment.

[istultus]

The important thing is that these things get funded. It doesn't matter what institute funds them. If an institute becomes stultified and corrupt, there's no reason to champion it over creating another.

[andreygrehov]

Slashing is not permanent. It is important to slash in order to determine a middle ground. If a company fires 100 employees and certain operations stop functioning, they may hire back 10 employees and reassess. If operations are still not functional enough, they will hire 10 more. This process continues until everything is operational again. The result is a company that functions just as effectively as before but with fewer employees. This is an optimization of resources and efficiency.

[Trasmatta]

> To prevent islet rejection, immune-suppressing drugs are given over the long term.

This makes it a non starter. Immunosuppressants are generally considered a worse quality of life than insulin treatment. That's why pancreas transplants are generally only done for type 1 diabetics if they are already on immunosuppressants.

[forgotpwagain]

Lots of biotech companies are working on immunosuppressant-free islet-equivalent transplantation.

Two examples off the top of my head: Sana recently announced islet cell transplantation without immunosuppression (press release: https://ir.sana.com/news-releases/news-release-details/sana-... ) and Vertex (ongoing trial: https://www.breakthrought1d.org/news-and-updates/vertex-laun... ).

[Terr_]

I'm hopeful that someday we'll have a good system for "caging" cells to prevent an immune response (in either direction) while also permitting the visitors to sustain themselves with blood nutrients and regulate hormones or clean waste.

Sort of like the role of the blood-brain barrier, or maybe a placenta.

[bradleyy]

As a T1D: can confirm. Taking insulin is a hassle, but definitely not "I'd rather take immunosuppressants". I'm having a hard time even contextualizing how much worse that is.

[pixl97]

Yep. The hard, if not kear impossible part will be just resetting the one part of the immune system attacking the islets without turning off or resetting the immune system.

[markdog12]

Note this is for the current common approach, not the new approach.

[overview]

This makes the vascular implants produced by Humacyte more interesting. They’re made of cells which aren’t recognized by the immune system. Humacyte is in the beginning stages of seeing if they can fit beta cells into the produced vascular implants, while remaining undetected by the immune system.

[jablongo]

If you pair this with genetically engineered hypoimmune islet cells to avoid needing to suppress immune system you could have a viable cure. https://ir.sana.com/news-releases/news-release-details/sana-...

[gsf_emergency_2]

Yes! You can also induce islet cells from the patient's own stem cells:

https://stemcellres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1328...

[y-curious]

Yes, immunity is the big problem. You probably need to replenish the islets either way. Also, I don't think doctors would be content giving someone that isn't suppressed this without loads of research.

[karim79]

So it's a trade-off between increased risk of cancer[0] and the consequences of type 1 diabetes? Doesn't sound like a fun trade-off but I don't know anything.

[0] https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/i...

[Trasmatta]

Type 1 diabetic here: you're right, it's a bad tradeoff. We already can do pancreas transplants for T1D, but the reason it's very uncommon is that immunosuppressants are a very bad tradeoff. Insulin treatment is preferred in the vast majority of cases.

Stuff like this will never be a breakthrough until it doesn't need immunosuppressants. The best advancements in diabetes treatment will most likely continue to be on closed loop artificial pancreas systems.

[arcticbull]

If you take rapamycin or a rapalog as an anti-rejection drug, your risk of cancer is lower - not higher - because it's not actually an immune suppressant so much as a drug that prevents hyperimmunity. [1] Other immune suppressants work differently but it's not a blanket true statement that taking anti-rejection drugs will increase your risk of cancer. Depends what you take.

You can read the section in [1] titled "Cancer prevention in humans."

> Starting from 2004, numerous studies demonstrated that rapamycin and everolimus reduced the incidence of various cancers in organ transplant patients.

[edit] In fact in addition to its use as an anti-rejection medication, rapamycin is used as chemotherapy to treat certain forms of cancer.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10103596/

[gsf_emergency_2]

There was a recent "breakthrough" involving the same, except with patient's own stem cells, & not just in mice.

https://stemcellres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1328...

That would mitigate the cancer risk, since immunosuppression would not be required?

[hereme888]

The author claimed no competing interests, yet his research is used for the patents. We'll see how it plays out in the real world after all the stardust settles.

[ThrowawayTestr]

Awesome. Hopefully when this is perfected they'll be enough pancreases to cure everyone. My pancreas is ear marked for my sibling should I become an eligible donor.

[whostolemyhat]

5 years away?

[doubtfuluser]

in mice

[smm11]

Cool! Now fix Type 2, which is managed by reducing sugar intake.

No, wait, just take a pill!

[WindyMiller]

...IN MICE

[mlhpdx]

And not just mice, but mice engineered with “T1D like” conditions. Human testing too early is certainly undesirable but these studies with mice, while necessary and important, are nothing newsworthy for the general public (but good for fundraising for follow up work).

[bitwize]

Late last year a woman's T1D was put into remission using beta cells derived from her own stem cells: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03394-9

She was on immunosuppressants, so how long the new beta cells would last without those is still an open question. Other similar, ongoing trials are showing promising results.

[strkitten]

Indeed, I would appreciate if the title were updated to reflect that the subjects were mice, not humans. It’s a bit misleading.

[_carbyau_]

Yeah! How amazing is that! Reversing type 1 diabetes anywhere is amazing.

A way to go until it becomes an option for humans. And then way more to go until it becomes a preferred option.

But this is great news.

[pepsi-not-coke]

great, now let's cure type 2, which gets much less attention

[riebalas]

I have great news for you: you can cure it on your own, just get off donuts and move your ass. I'm actually jealous of type 2's.

[davidelettieri]

Also impact of diet should not be underestimated https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5357144/

edit: at least on mices for now

[aktau]

I've experienced quasi-remission twice now. Both times when I got so sick from food in a foreign country that I couldn't eat for days (and had no appetite for it either). I lived on water. Afterwards, for 1-2 weeks, I did not require insulin (while eating a lot).

I used to think it was due to the pills they gave me there, or perhaps due to the bacteria (or virus?) causing some strange temporal abating of auto-immune response and regrowth of beta-cells. But seeing this is making me reconsider that (I was doubting the effect of the medicine since I took some home and took it in a healthy state but did not get the good effects).