BEIJING, Sept 30 — Chinese scientists have announced the world’s first successful case of using cell transplants to treat type 1 diabetes.
The patient, a 25-year-old woman who had lived with the chronic condition for over a decade, was able to naturally regulate her blood sugar approximately 2.5 months after undergoing the minimally invasive procedure, according to a report by Shanghai-based news outlet The Paper.
According to South China Morning Post (SCMP), the report stated that the half-an-hour surgery involved a team of researchers from Tianjin First Central Hospital and Peking University, who published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Cell on Wednesday.
Diabetes poses a significant health challenge globally.
In China alone, the International Diabetes Federation reports that the country has the highest number of cases in the world, with over 140 million patients and a prevalence rate exceeding 12 per cent.
Type 1 diabetes, caused by an autoimmune reaction that destroys insulin-producing cells, accounts for about 5 per cent of all diabetes cases and often develops in children and adolescents. Patients with this condition cannot produce sufficient insulin to regulate blood glucose levels.
Insulin injections and glucose-lowering medications frequently fail to provide precise blood sugar control, leading to complications that can severely impact quality of life and even be life-threatening.
Islet transplantation — removing insulin-producing islet cells from a deceased donor and implanting them in a patient — is an effective treatment but is limited by donor shortages.
Recent advances in stem cell therapy have opened new avenues for diabetes treatment.
The method described in the Cell paper utilised chemically induced pluripotent stem-cell-derived islets (CiPSC islets). The researchers first collected adipose tissue from the patient and used small molecules to reprogramme these cells into pluripotent stem cells, which were then transformed into islet cells and transplanted back into the patient’s body.
Since these pancreatic cells were derived from the patient herself, the risk of immune rejection was eliminated.
SCMP reported that the research team received official approval for clinical studies in June last year and performed the transplant on their first patient. The young woman, diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 11 years prior, had previously undergone two liver transplants and one unsuccessful islet transplant.
Post-transplant, her fasting blood glucose levels gradually normalised, and her need for external insulin decreased steadily. Remarkably, she completely stopped requiring insulin injections 75 days after the procedure, and this improvement has persisted for over a year. Previously, she experienced significant fluctuations in blood sugar and multiple episodes of severe hypoglycaemia. By five months post-transplant, her blood sugar levels remained within the target range more than 98 per cent of the time.
The team opted for a simplified surgical approach, transplanting the cells into the abdominal muscles rather than the liver, thereby reducing the inflammation risks associated with traditional islet transplants. The minimally invasive injection facilitated imaging and allowed for easy retrieval of cells if necessary, with the entire procedure taking less than half an hour.
At the one-year mark, the clinical data met all study endpoints, with no signs of transplant-related complications, the team noted in the paper. The promising results from this patient suggest further clinical studies on CiPSC islet transplants for type 1 diabetes are warranted.
More importantly, the success of functional cells derived from chemically reprogrammed stem cells in a clinical setting indicates that this method could serve as a general platform for efficiently producing various functional cell types.
As quoted by SCMP, the team at Peking University Health Science Centre said: “This could pave the way for broader use of cell therapy in treating major diseases — a breakthrough that may represent one of the first instances of induced pluripotent stem technology curing a serious disease in clinical settings.”
However, as the patient was on immunosuppressants due to her liver transplants, the risk of rejection of the CiPSC islet cells remains to be fully evaluated.
Long-term follow-up of the patient’s recovery is essential.
