Chinese doctors claimed to cure Type 1 diabetes as a first in the world

News Mania Desk /Piyal Chatterjee/ 1st October 2024

Chinese doctors claimed to have healed a type 1 diabetic patient via cell transplants in what was reported to be the first such case in the world.

After undergoing the minimally invasive procedure, the 25-year-old patient—who had the chronic disease for more than a decade—was able to naturally regulate her blood sugar approximately 2.5 months later, according to a Saturday article from Shanghai-based news site The Paper.The breakthrough team released their results last week in the peer-reviewed journal Cell.

The young woman from Tianjin, China, had already had two liver transplants and one unsuccessful pancreatic islet cell transplant before being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes eleven years ago. After receiving formal approval for the clinical research in June of last year, researchers from Tianjin First Central Hospital and Peking University performed the transplant on their first patient.
According to the report, “chemically induced pluripotent stem-cell-derived islets,” or CiPSC islets, were used in the treatment.In order to accomplish this, the scientists extracted the patient’s adipose tissue cells and reprogrammed them into pluripotent stem cells using small molecule drugs.

After being converted into islet cells, these cells were injected into the abdominal muscles, which was a novel location for this kind of treatment.Stem cells are exceptional cells that have the ability to differentiate into numerous types of specialized cells for tissue repair as well as self-renew. There was no immunological rejection because these pancreatic cells were from the patient. The shallow site allowed for imaging monitoring, the injection was minimally invasive, and the cells should be retrievable if necessary.

The patient’s fasting blood glucose levels steadily returned to normal after the CiPSC islet transplant, and her reliance on outside insulin gradually reduced.

Seventy-five days following the operation, her need for insulin shots completely disappeared. The media reports that the improvement has persisted for more than a year.