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Human Stem Cell Transplants Successfully Reversed Diabetes In Mice
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists successfully reversed diabetes in mice by transplanting mice human stem cells into mice in a discovery that may lead to way to finding a cure for a disease that affects 8.3 percent of the U.S. population. ... In an experiment designed to mimic human clinical conditions, researchers were able to wean diabetic mice off of insulin four months after the rodents were transplanted with human pancreatic stem cells (abstract). [They] were able to recreate the 'feedback loop' that enabled insulin levels to automatically rise or fall based on the rodents' blood glucose levels. Additionally, researchers found that the mice were able to maintain healthy blood sugar levels even after they were fed large quantities of sugar. After several months, researchers removed the transplanted cells from the mice and found that the cells had all the markings of normal insulin-producing pancreatic cells."
It works, bitches.
Very cool, but when considering the public health implications of diabetes research, keep in mind that this is type 1 diabetes they're describing, in which pancreatic beta cells don't produce insulin. The growing diabetic epidemic (pardon the pun) is largely (ok ok, I'm done...really) type 2, in which obesity-related factors overwhelm the body's ability to produce insulin. What the researchers are describing is unlikely to have any impact on type 2, and type 2 accounts for over 90% of diabetes in western nations.
Type 1 diabetes will be likely wiped from the planet in the next two decades -- by stem cells, monoclonal antibodies, or other therapy. There's a lot of good work going on here. Good riddance. And cheers to the researchers who make it happen. But the diabetes people inflict on themselves isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
TFA has a couple of caveats worth noting(aside from the usual "'works in mice means' maybe a decade out for you, sickie"):
The research was on Type I diabetes, aimed at restoring insulin production, not Type II and reversing insulin resistance.
Also: "The studies were performed in diabetic mice that lacked a properly functioning immune system that would otherwise have rejected the cells. We now need to identify a suitable way of protecting the cells from immune attack so that the transplant can ultimately be performed in the absence of any immunosuppression". That could prove to be a big one, given the relationship between the Type I and patient's immune system destroying their own pancreatic cells, for reasons somewhat murky. If the patient's own immune system is already killing their own cells, I don't envy the research team that has to keep a transplanted cell population alive without cratering the immune system so hard that something else kills the patient...
This research is on an animal model of Type I diabetes, which is generally not associated with 'lifestyle' causes(environmental causes are under some suspicion; but nothing like the causal clarity of Type II exists). By sheer verbal inprecision, 'diabetes' covers both types; but this research doesn't.
It's also worth noting that, while the stubborn spectre of 'free will' hangs around to cloud the issue, 'lifestyle' diseases have a nasty habit of cropping up under their preferred economic and social conditions almost as reliably, at a population level, as their biological cousins. In the case of obesity, the wealthy bits of the developed world led the charge; but it turns out that you can develop troublingly high levels on a surprisingly low GDP per capita. Diabetes research isn't exactly in the 'altruistic research on neglected-but-horrid tropical diseases of poor people' category; but it's not exactly in the 'hair loss and limp-dick-itis' camp either...
That problem of course is, does it stop the body from attacking the pancreas again? That's really the big problem, same reason why islet transplants while successful have a 70% failure rate after 10 years. The body continues to attack, and in rare cases will destroy implanted islets within a year.
Om, nomnomnom...
One problem... well, two actually:
1) Once you start imposing your morality on what gets researched and what does not, you become no better than those who base their research on profit motive.
2) Why should those who got Type 2 Diabetes w/o being fat have to suffer? Because you say so?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Genome-wide association study (GWAS) results for Type 2 diabetes suggest a much larger footprint for islet cell dysfunction in T2D than previously thought. While the "insulin resistance" paradigm still works, we've had to adapt our model to include the more disordered insulin secretion indicated by these results. This is why unbiased and hypothesis-free research methods like GWAS are so powerful -- they aren't dependent on our preconceived notions of how things "should" be. A nice review reference: Herder et al. Eur J Clin Invest. 2011;41(6):679-92.