London - Scientists on Thursday hailed stemcell research into a cure for diabetes as potentially the biggest medical breakthrough since antibiotics.
It could result in an end to insulin injections, and to the disabling and deadly complications of the disease, such as strokes and heart attacks, blindness and kidney disease.
The treatment, which involves making insulin-producing cells from stemcells, was described as a “phenomenal accomplishment” that will “leave a dent in the history of diabetes”.
Harvard University researchers said they had made a “giant leap forward” in the quest to find a cure for type 1 diabetes. This form affects 400 000 Britons, including almost 30 000 children.
It occurs when the immune system attacks the cells in the pancreas that make the insulin we need to turn the sugar in food into energy. Unable to make any insulin, type 1 diabetics need regular injections to stop blood sugar levels from fluctuating wildly.
But the research also offers hope to the three million Britons with type 2 diabetes, in which the body doesn’t make insulin or the insulin doesn’t work properly. This version is fuelled by obesity, rather than the immune system and eats up a tenth of the NHS budget.
As with many recent medical advances, this one is based on the potential of stemcells, the “master cells” that can turn into other cell type and are widely seen as a repair kit for the body.
Harvard researcher Doug Melton, who has two children with diabetes, found a way of making insulin-producing cells. Dr Melton promised his children he’d find a cure.
In some cases the stem cells came from human embryos. But he was also able to turn human skin cells into ones that make insulin – something that would be much more ethically acceptable.
Grown in the lab and transplanted into a mouse with diabetes, the cells made insulin and cured the animal, the journal Cell reports. Importantly, if this is ever to help humans in large numbers, Dr Melton can make billions of cells.
The lab-grown cells are just one step away from being trialled in people.
Other researchers have made insulin-producing cells but these are the first that seem to work as well as the real thing. Dr Melton, who dedicated his career to finding a cure for type 1 diabetes 23 years ago when his son Sam was diagnosed with the condition, said: “We are now just one pre-clinical step away from the finish line.
“It was gratifying to know that we could do something that we always thought was possible. If we had shown this was not possible, then I would have had to give up on this whole approach. Now I’m really energised.”
Dr Melton said he hoped to have human trials under way within a “few years”.
Chris Mason, professor of regenerative medicine at University College London, said it was “potentially a major medical breakthrough”.
He added: “If this scalable technology is proven to work in both the clinic and in the manufacturing facility, the impact on the treatment of diabetes will be a medical game-changer on a par with antibiotics and bacterial infections.”
Jose Oberholzer, a diabetes expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said the research “will leave a dent in the history of diabetes”, adding: “This is a phenomenal accomplishment.”
Dr Richard Insel, of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which part-funded the research, cautioned that it had so far proved its worth only on mice.
But he added: “If you could get people off insulin completely, it would change their lives.” Dr Melton said his children had taken the news in their stride, adding: “I think like all kids, they always assumed that if I said I’d do this, I’d do it.”
THE GRIND OF DAILY INJECTIONS
People with type 1 diabetes need regular insulin injections to control their blood sugar levels.
It has to be injected because if it were taken as a tablet, it would break down in the stomach and be unable to enter the bloodstream where it acts to reduce the amount of glucose.
Either a syringe or an injection pen can be used, with most people needing two to four injections a day. An alternative to injecting insulin is a portable pump.
About the size of a pack of playing cards, the pump is attached to a long, thin piece of tubing, with a needle at the end, which is inserted under the skin. Most people insert the needle into their stomach. It delivers constant amounts of insulin during the day. - Daily Mail