2024-10-08 04:30:30
This is a world first. A 25-year-old woman suffering from type 1 diabetes received a transplant of cells capable of producing insulin in China; innovatively, these cells were derived from tissues extracted from his own body.
The Chinese team first took a sample of adipose tissue from this patient to extract stem cells. These undifferentiated cells have the capacity to be reconverted into any tissue in the body. Then, these stem cells were reprogrammed, in vitro, into cells with the capacity to produce insulin, the hormone responsible for controlling blood sugar levels, but which the bodies of diabetics are no longer able to produce. make. In June 2023, these cells were injected into the muscles of the young woman’s abdomen; an intervention which lasted less than half an hour.
Published in the journal Cell, September 25the results obtained by Shusen Wang and his colleagues, from Nankai University, are judged “spectacular” by François Pattou, surgeon at Lille University Hospital, who did not participate in the study.
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Two and a half months after the transplant, the transplanted cells began to produce their own insulin in this young woman. And this, in sufficient quantities so that the patient can live without the need to receive repeated injections of insulin – these vital injections which punctuate the daily life of patients.
Islet of Langerhans transplant
A year later, these transplanted cells maintained this high level of production, and this woman was able to continue without exogenous insulin. She had regained stable control of her blood glucose level (blood sugar), which remained at a normal level for more than 98% of the day. She therefore no longer suffered the dangerous spikes or drops in her blood sugar.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that usually occurs at a young age, before 15 years in a third of cases. It is triggered when the immune system attacks the beta cells of the pancreas, responsible for producing the famous insulin, which it no longer recognizes as belonging to the patient’s body.
“When the first symptoms [soif, besoin fréquent d’uriner] appear, 90% of beta cells are already destroyed”specifies Eric Renard, endocrinologist at Montpellier University Hospital. Type 1 diabetes affects around 6% of diabetics, compared to more than 90% for type 2 diabetes (or middle-age diabetes). In France, its prevalence is around 260,000 patients.
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