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Harvard team "cures" diabetes in mice with stem cells; a similar clinical trial is lauched by others

bookbah

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I do not have diabetes
In a world-first, Harvard University's Doug Melton reported in a top journal "curing" diabetes in mice using both embryonic and adult stem cells, meticulously creating perfect beta cells that respond repeatedly to insulin. A similar approach by a different and unrelated group, involving stem cells that were differentiated to slightly less mature beta cells than Melton's before implant, is at the heart of a clinical trial in Type 1 patients. http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/articles/2014/10/embryonic-stem-cells-trial-diabetes
 
Amazing. They're starting human trials in a few weeks. I'm very confident that there will be a cure, or a closed loop system, available to us in the next 5 years or so.
 
Hello
Might be a daft question, but won't our antibodies just kill them off again?
 
Hello
Might be a daft question, but won't our antibodies just kill them off again?
They say that they're planning to put the cells in a capsule that blocks immune cells from entering. Doesn't mention whether this capsule has been invented yet!
 
They say that they're planning to put the cells in a capsule that blocks immune cells from entering. Doesn't mention whether this capsule has been invented yet!
Yeah I read it needs to go in a capsule which they haven't even started to develop!


Sent from the Diabetes Forum App
 
Yeah I read it needs to go in a capsule which they haven't even started to develop!


Sent from the Diabetes Forum App
Ah. Slight stumbling block there. Sounds like the hard bit has been done. I suppose the could put it into a porous capsule, with holes smaller than a white blood cell. Who knows!?
 
They say that they're planning to put the cells in a capsule that blocks immune cells from entering. Doesn't mention whether this capsule has been invented yet!
But Sam, wouldn't this mean immunosuppressants for life? I'd prefer insulin to that.
 
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