Diabetes researchers say they’ve made a breakthrough that could pave the way to eliminating the need for daily insulin injections.
the main points:
- The Monash University team managed to get pancreatic cells to produce insulin
- If the research leads to animal studies and then clinical trials, this could reduce the need for insulin injections
- An independent researcher said it could be a ‘game changer’ in treating chronic disease
Monash University research published in Nature Signal transduction and targeted therapycan lead to insulin regeneration in pancreatic stem cells.
Insulin is a hormone produced by what are known as beta cells in the pancreas, which helps regulate blood sugar levels.
In general, people with diabetes do not produce enough insulin naturally, or their bodies do not use the hormone as it should. The beta cells in many diabetics are unable to produce insulin at all.
“There are different forms of diabetes and it is a disease that requires relentless attention,” said Keith Al-Hasani, a researcher at Monash University and one of the study’s authors.
Type 1 diabetes generally appears when patients are children, which Dr. Al-Hasani said often means up to five insulin injections per day as young adults adjust to the disease. Adult patients can give up to 100 injections per month to control the disease.
After the death of a 13-year-old boy with type 1 diabetes, researchers studied donated pancreatic cells and used a compound to stimulate insulin production.
“We are reprogramming cells that do not generally produce insulin, to express insulin now,” said study researcher and co-author Ishant Khurana.
GSK126 has been approved for use to treat another condition by the US Food and Drug Administration, but has not been used to treat diabetes in Australia or elsewhere.
While the researchers studied stem cells, they did not genetically alter the cells to obtain their results.
The authors acknowledge that there is still a long way to go before a potential treatment can be used in humans.
Next they want to collect more pancreatic cell samples from a larger group of people, and then move on to animal trials before they start human clinical trials.
The ultimate goal is to eliminate the need for daily injections and pancreas transplants, Dr. Khurana said.
It will affect most people with type 1 diabetes, and about 30 percent of people with type 2 diabetes who depend on insulin.
According to Diabetes Australia, about 1.8 million Australians have diabetes and it is the fastest growing disease in the country. About 500 million people are infected with the disease worldwide.
Simon McCroden, 46, has been taking insulin on his own since he was seven years old, and said removing the burden of daily injections would be “enormous.”
“I just had to learn how to go about my day to day life,” he said, “but that would be cool.”
Associate Professor Neil Cohen, director of clinical research for diabetes at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, said Monash’s research is still in its early days but has shown great potential.
“There are a number of attempts to find ways to replace beta cells, and they are all very important,” he said. “And if that is possible, what does it mean that it would be a treatment for patients with type 1 diabetes?”
Cohen, who was not involved in the study, said research over several decades has found that “it appears to be very difficult to reprogram cells to become insulin-producing cells.
“People will no longer need insulin injections, and they will not bear the burden of this chronic disease.”
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