Chinese have ‘reversed’ type 1 diabetes with stem cell therapy

Beijing: Chinese scientists claimed to have cured a chronic type-1 diabetes patient using cell transplants in what was stated to be the first such case in the world. The patient, a 25-year-old woman who had the chronic condition for over a decade, was able to naturally regulate her blood sugar some two and half months after undergoing the minimally invasive surgery, the Shanghai-based Chinese news outlet, The Paper reported. According to the report carried by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, the surgery took just half an hour.

The team behind the breakthrough published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Cell last week. Researchers from Tianjin First Central Hospital and Peking University were among those who took part in the study, the report said.

So far, islet transplant, which involves removing islet cells from the pancreas of a deceased donor and implanting them in the liver of someone with type 1 diabetes, is regarded as an effective clinical treatment but is hindered by donor shortages. Islet cells in the pancreas are responsible for producing hormones like insulin and glucagon which are then released into the bloodstream and help to control glucose levels. Now, stem cell therapy has opened up new possibilities for diabetes treatment, the report said.

The treatment involved utilising “chemically induced pluripotent stem-cell-derived islets” or CiPSC islets, according to the article published in the Cell journal. To do this, the researchers first collected adipose tissue cells from the patient and used small molecule chemicals to reprogramme these cells into pluripotent stem cells. These cells were then transformed into islet cells and transplanted back into the patient's body. Because these pancreatic cells originated from the patient, there was no immune rejection.

In June last year, the Chinese research team received official approval for clinical research and subsequently carried out the transplant on their first patient.

The young woman from Tianjin was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 11 years ago and had already undergone two liver transplants and one unsuccessful pancreatic islet cell transplant.

Following the CiPSC islet transplant, the patient's fasting blood glucose levels gradually normalised, and her need for external insulin steadily decreased. She completely stopped needing insulin injections 75 days after the transplant, and the improvement has lasted for over a year, the report said. She used to experience significant swings in blood sugar levels and also suffered multiple episodes of severe hypoglycaemia.

After five months post-transplant, her sugar levels stayed within the target range more than 98 per cent of the time, and this stability has been maintained, it said. The team also simplified the surgery and chose to transplant the cells into the abdominal muscles instead of the liver and avoid the inflammation risks associated with traditional islet transplants. The injection was minimally invasive, the shallow site facilitated imaging monitoring, and the cells could be retrieved anytime if needed. The entire procedure took less than half an hour.

At the one year mark, “the clinical data met all study endpoints with no indication of transplant-related abnormalities. Promising results from this patient suggest that further clinical studies assessing CiPSC islet transplant in type 1 diabetes are warranted”, the team noted in the paper.