Lab-grown cells offer hope of curing severe type 1 diabetes, Dutch study dinds
A pioneering study has found that laboratory-grown insulin-producing cells may effectively cure severe forms of type 1 diabetes, offering new hope to patients who until now relied on scarce donor organs. The preliminary results, which researchers describe as promising, indicate that this breakthrough could eventually make treatment accessible to far more people living with the autoimmune disease, NOS reports.
Unlike type 2 diabetes, which is largely linked to aging and lifestyle, type 1 diabetes develops when the immune system destroys the body’s own insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. An estimated 120,000 people in the Netherlands have type 1 diabetes. Although most patients manage their blood sugar reasonably well with medication, they face higher risks of damage to their eyes, kidneys, heart and blood vessels.
For a small group of patients whose disease is so complex that medication fails, the only options have been transplantation of the entire pancreas or an islet cell transplant, which uses clusters of insulin-producing cells harvested from deceased donors. Diabetes patient Anton Schaddelee, who underwent an islet cell transplant, told NOS that the procedure allowed him to fully return to daily life after struggling with the disease’s most severe form.
Patients who receive either type of transplant often achieve complete remission. If that is not the case, they can at least maintain stable blood glucose levels with medication. However, the treatments remain limited to a select few because donor organs are in short supply.
The new study points to a potential solution. Researchers have developed insulin-producing islet cells in the laboratory from pluripotent stem cells—primitive cells that can become any cell type in the body. According to the findings, most participants with severe type 1 diabetes were free of the disease one year after receiving infusions of these lab-grown cells.
“The real breakthrough is that islets made from stem cells in a laboratory can functionally cure diabetes,” Eelco de Koning, physician and professor of diabetology at Leiden University Medical Center, told NOS. “This shows that in the future, an unlimited supply of islets could be available for treatment.”
Further research is needed to generate enough scientific evidence before this method can become part of standard care. In November, supported by funding from the Stichting Diabetes Onderzoek Nederland, a new research center named Cure One will open in Leiden. The facility will consolidate research into stem cell therapies and immune system interactions and is expected to strengthen both LUMC and the Leiden Bioscience Park as European hubs for diabetes treatment innovation.
A key objective for Cure One is reportedly to eventually make the therapy available to all patients with type 1 diabetes. “At this moment, recipients of islets from deceased donors—or from stem cells, as in the published study—must use immune-suppressing medication for the rest of their lives to prevent their bodies from rejecting the cells,” De Koning told NOS.
As a result, their immune defenses remain weakened, increasing the risk of infections and other side effects. This reportedly raises the question of whether the treatment will provide meaningful health benefits to patients with less complicated forms of diabetes.
“The challenge is to find out how we can adapt the stem cells and the immune system in such a way that the immune system leaves the new islets alone,” De Koning explained. “That might also be possible by first creating stem cells from people with type 1 diabetes themselves, then growing ‘personal’ islets from those cells. By bringing all expertise together in Cure One, we will do everything possible to ensure the next breakthrough follows soon.”
