Chinese researchers and physicians are said to have used cell therapy for the first time to successfully treat a diabetic patient, marking a significant medical achievement.
The 59-year-old patient had significant problems from type 2 diabetes, which he had battled for 25 years. Even after receiving a kidney transplant in 2017, he was still in need of several daily insulin injections since he had lost the majority of his pancreatic islet function, which is essential for controlling blood glucose levels.
“I think this study represents an important advance in the field of cell therapy for diabetes,” said Timothy Kieffer, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, in an interview with the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
With an emphasis on creating islet-like cells from human stem cell cultures, researchers worldwide are investigating islet transplants as a viable alternative therapy. The Chinese team’s efforts have paid off after more than ten years of work. The patient had a cell transplant in July 2021. Amazingly, after just 11 weeks, he was entirely off of external insulin, and a year later, he was entirely off of oral medicine for blood sugar control.
The researchers used the patient’s peripheral blood mononuclear cells, which were then programmed under the direction of Yin Hao, a prominent researcher at Shanghai Changzheng Hospital. These cells transformed “seed cells” and were used to recreate pancreatic islet tissue in a controlled environment. Yin highlighted that this discovery represents a significant development in regenerative medicine, which uses the body’s natural healing powers to treat disease.
Differentiating stem cells into high-quality insulin-producing cells on a wide scale for therapeutic use is a typical challenge in translational research. A group of diabetic experts headed by Kieffer conducted an investigation on how to improve scalable manufacturing and published it earlier this year in Stem Cell Research & Therapy. They proposed methods to standardize the manufacturing process and provided insightful information about the large-scale manufacture of pancreatic cells produced from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs). They also identified critical indicators for evaluating quality during cell therapy production.
Although Kieffer’s team’s preclinical results support the use of stem cell-derived islets for treating type 2 diabetes, Kieffer claims that Yin’s study is “the first evidence in humans.”
According to Huang Yanzhong, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, the prevalence of diabetes in China is disproportionately high. He emphasized that even though China makes up 17.7% of the world’s population, a startling 25% of that population is diabetic, placing a heavy load on the government’s health system. The International Diabetes Federation estimates that 40 million of China’s 140 million diabetics are insulin-dependent and require lifelong injections.
Kieffer told SCMP that if cell treatment is effective, “it can free patients from the burden of chronic medications, improve health and quality of life, and reduce healthcare expenditures.” However, based on the results of this Chinese study, he stressed that additional patient-centered research is required to attain these results.
