Insulin-free life for diabetics closer after successful cell pouch trial
By Paul McClure
September 12, 2024
Implanting a pouch of stem-cell-derived pancreas cells under the skin of type 1 diabetics has enabled them to live without insulin injections for years and maintain non-diabetic blood sugar levels, according to the results of a clinical trial. It’s a big step towards a functional cure for the disease.
Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune condition where the body’s immune system attacks and destroys the insulin-producing beta cells in the islets of the pancreas, requiring type 1 diabetics to inject insulin daily to replace what’s not being produced. T1D is commonly diagnosed during childhood or early adolescence and requires constant monitoring to reduce the risk of episodes of low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) and long-term complications.
"Functional cure" for diabetes restores insulin production with stem cells
By Michael Irving
September 30, 2024
A patient with type 1 diabetes has been functionally cured of the disease, requiring no insulin doses for over a year. The treatment involves growing and transplanting new insulin-producing cells from the patient’s own stem cells.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease where the patient’s immune system attacks insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. This means patients become unable to manage their blood glucose levels and require regular injections of insulin.
Now, early results from a phase I clinical trial suggest that replacing those lost insulin-producing cells with new ones could be a viable treatment. The first patient to receive this kind of transplant has now been insulin-independent for over a year, the team says.
weatheriscool wrote: ↑Tue Oct 01, 2024 6:29 am
"Functional cure" for diabetes restores insulin production with stem cells
By Michael Irving
September 30, 2024
A patient with type 1 diabetes has been functionally cured of the disease, requiring no insulin doses for over a year. The treatment involves growing and transplanting new insulin-producing cells from the patient’s own stem cells.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease where the patient’s immune system attacks insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. This means patients become unable to manage their blood glucose levels and require regular injections of insulin.
Now, early results from a phase I clinical trial suggest that replacing those lost insulin-producing cells with new ones could be a viable treatment. The first patient to receive this kind of transplant has now been insulin-independent for over a year, the team says.
People with diabetes take insulin to lower high blood sugar. However, if glucose levels plunge too low—from taking too much insulin or not eating enough sugar—people can experience hypoglycemia, which can lead to dizziness, cognitive impairment, seizures or comas. To prevent and treat this condition, researchers in ACS Central Science report encapsulating the hormone glucagon. In mouse trials, the nanocapsules activated when blood sugar levels dropped dangerously low and quickly restored glucose levels.
Glucagon is a hormone that signals the liver to release glucose into the bloodstream. It's typically given by injection to counteract severe hypoglycemia in people who have diabetes. While an emergency glucagon injection can correct blood sugar levels in about 30 minutes, formulations can be unstable and insoluble in water. In some cases, the hormone quickly breaks down when mixed for injections and clumps together to form toxic fibrils. Additionally, many hypoglycemic episodes occur at night, when people with diabetes aren't likely to test their blood sugar.
New type 2 diabetes treatment could mean an end to insulin shots
By Abhimanyu Ghoshal
October 14, 2024
86% of type 2 diabetes patients treated with a new procedure no longer needed insulin throughout the two-year-long study they participated in. That procedure could be a real game changer for nearly half a billion people currently estimated to be living with the condition worldwide.
Led by Dr. Celine Busch, a researcher at Amsterdam University Medical Center, the study was presented today at this year's United European Gastroenterology Week congress in Vienna, Austria. It was conducted with a small group of 14 participants aged between 28 and 75 years, who were monitored over the course of 24 months.
Type 2 diabetes is a long-term condition that affects the way your body processes blood sugar, aka glucose. The body either resists insulin or doesn't produce enough of it. This results in too much glucose circulating in your bloodstream.
‘Insulin with a switch’ will help diabetics avoid dangerous hypos
By Paul McClure
October 17, 2024
An insulin that switches itself on and off in response to blood glucose levels has proven successful in lowering the risk of dangerously low glucose levels, or hypos, in animals. According to researchers, the drug holds great promise for the tens of millions of insulin-requiring diabetics worldwide.
Low blood glucose, or hypoglycemia, can be dangerous for diabetics. Because the brain relies on glucose to function properly, severe hypoglycemia can cause seizures and loss of consciousness. It’s something that those taking insulin worry about constantly, with questions like, ‘Have I taken the right amount of insulin to cover this meal, or too much?' or 'How will the exercise I’ve just done affect my blood sugar levels?’
New Diabetes Treatment Eliminates Need for Insulin in Most Patients
The experimental therapy takes just a few weeks and removed insulin from the equation for 86% of trial participants.
By Adrianna Nine October 21, 2024
A new form of treatment for Type 2 diabetes could eliminate the need for insulin injections. In a recent trial, 86% of participants—who spanned a wide range of ages and body mass index (BMI) placements—were able to forgo insulin after just a few weeks of the novel therapy.
Presented last week at United European Gastroenterology's annual conference, the treatment combines an existing injectable drug with a new procedure called re-cellularization via electroporation therapy, or ReCET. The injectable, called semaglutide, is used exclusively with Type 2 diabetes patients to mimic the effects of the GLP-1 hormone, which naturally regulates the body's blood sugar levels. ReCET meanwhile occurs via endoscopy—a procedure that involves snaking a thin tube down a sedated patient's esophagus—and delivers small electrical pulses to the stomach's mucosal lining. These pulses reportedly improve the body's sensitivity to endogenous, or naturally-occurring, insulin.
A naturally occurring fat molecule reduced heart inflammation and scarring caused by diabetes, thereby improving cardiac function, according to new research. The findings open the door to developing a new treatment for diabetes-induced heart disease.
Diabetes is associated with serious cardiovascular diseases like atherosclerosis (the plaque buildup in the arteries), heart attack, cardiomyopathy, and heart failure. Although the mechanism by which diabetes contributes to cardiac conditions like these isn’t fully understood, persistent inflammation is known to be one culprit.
New research by Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, has identified a naturally occurring fat molecule, lipoxin A4 or LXA4, that can switch off the body’s inflammatory response, preventing chronic inflammation and improving heart function in diabetics. The discovery opens the door to targeted, effective treatments for diabetic heart disease.
Dark chocolate has been extensively studied for its cardiometabolic health benefits, but findings have been inconsistent, spurring heated debates over whether this treat has pros that outweigh the cons. Now, new research puts dark chocolate back on the table, quantifying its impact on type 2 diabetes risk and weight gain in a study of nearly 200,000 US adults.
New analysis out of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, US and Chinese scientists has determined that eating five serves of dark chocolate a week could reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes by 21%, compared to those who abstained completely or rarely indulged.
What's more, fans of milk chocolate did not share in the same potential benefits – in fact, they were more likely to have negative health outcomes.
"Intake of milk, but not dark, chocolate was positively associated with weight gain," noted the researchers in the paper. "Compared with those who did not change their chocolate intake, increased intake of milk chocolate over four-year periods was associated with 0.35 kg [12 oz] more four-year weight gain over time. Increasing dark chocolate intake was not associated with weight change over time."
ETH researchers have developed a new gene switch that can be activated using a commercially available nitroglycerine patch applied to the skin. One day, researchers want to use switches of this kind to trigger cell therapies for various metabolic diseases.
The body regulates its metabolism precisely and continuously, with specialized cells in the pancreas constantly monitoring the amount of sugar in the blood, for example. When this blood sugar level increases after a meal, the body sets a signal cascade in motion in order to bring it back down.
Adding engineered human blood vessel-forming cells to islet transplants boosted the survival of the insulin-producing cells and reversed diabetes in a preclinical study led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The new approach, which requires further development and testing, could someday enable the much wider use of islet transplants to cure diabetes.
Islets, found in the pancreas, are clusters of insulin-secreting and other cells enmeshed in tiny, specialized blood vessels. The insulin cells are killed by an autoimmune process in type 1 diabetes, which affects roughly nine million people worldwide. Although islet transplantation is a promising approach for treating such cases, the only FDA-approved method to date has significant limitations.
A clinical trial to test the effectiveness of a new, plant-based oral drug to treat type 2 diabetes has produced some promising results. The drug significantly improved blood glucose control and boosted heart and liver health. Larger clinical studies are pending.
Berberine is a naturally occurring alkaloid found in various plants. It has been used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to treat digestive issues, inflammation, and bacterial infections.
Researchers from Peking University People’s Hospital in China recently conducted a phase 2 clinical trial assessing the safety and effectiveness of a berberine derivative, berberine ursodeoxycholate, to treat type 2 diabetes (T2D).
T2D is the most common form of diabetes, accounting for around 90% of all diabetics. It is caused by insulin resistance, where the body can’t respond fully to the insulin the pancreas produces, so blood glucose rises (hyperglycemia). Adopting a healthy lifestyle is often the first step in treating T2D, with the aim of preventing disease progression and reducing blood glucose to normal or near-normal levels. If that fails, oral antidiabetic medications can be introduced.
Researchers across 14 medical centers in China, including Peking University People's Hospital, have found that an investigational drug, berberine ursodeoxycholate (HTD1801), significantly lowered blood sugar levels and improved metabolic and liver health in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). The findings and an invited commentary, both published in JAMA Network Open, suggest that HTD1801 could serve as a new oral treatment option for T2D and its related complications.
T2D is one of the most common metabolic diseases worldwide, driven by rising rates of obesity and sedentary lifestyles. The condition is characterized by insulin resistance and impaired insulin secretion, leading to chronic high blood sugar levels. While multiple medications exist to help regulate glucose, many patients struggle to achieve adequate control, leaving them at higher risk for heart disease, liver disease, and other metabolic disorders.
New research from Washington State University in collaboration with five other institutions suggests that automated insulin delivery (AID) systems are safe and effective for use by older adults with type 1 diabetes. The findings counter common assumptions that older adults would struggle to use the more advanced technology employed in the medical devices.
In an AID system, a sensor attached to the arm or belly continuously monitors blood sugar levels and communicates that data to a wearable insulin pump, which then automatically adjusts insulin dosing without the wearer having to input instructions or inject the insulin themselves. Some models connect wirelessly to smartphones, providing the wearer with detailed and real-time data about their blood sugar control.
"It's a big change for people to use technology to manage their diabetes when many of them have used multiple daily injections for 30 years or more," said Professor Naomi Chaytor, one of the principal investigators on the study and chair of the WSU Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine Department of Community and Behavioral Health. "There's a stereotype that technology is harder for older adults, but they did quite well."
Jaeb Center for Health Research conducted a randomized controlled trial evaluating the impact of automated insulin delivery (AID) in adults with insulin-treated type 2 diabetes. AID significantly lowered glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels and improved glucose control compared to standard insulin therapy with continuous glucose monitoring (CGM).
AID therapy resulted in a mean HbA1c reduction of 0.9 percentage points over 13 weeks, while the control group experienced a 0.3 percentage point reduction.
Automated insulin delivery systems have demonstrated benefits for patients with type 1 diabetes, yet their efficacy and safety for individuals with type 2 diabetes remain less established. Prior studies have either lacked randomized controlled designs or involved limited sample sizes, creating a gap in clinical understanding.
Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists are peptide-based therapeutics for treating diabetes and for weight loss. Unfortunately, shortages and high costs have made it difficult for people to start and maintain treatment.
Now, researchers report a drug delivery system that "paints" these peptides directly on the antibodies they target. In studies with mice, the system led to sustained weight loss and prolonged blood sugar management with a GLP-1 injection one fourth that of the standard dose.
Bradley Pentelute, professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), presents his team's results at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS 2025) held March 23–27 in San Diego.
Peptide-based therapies are highly effective. However, they are easily degraded by enzymes in a person's body because peptides lack the structural stability that larger, more complex proteins have.
An investigational blood test for type 1 diabetes can accurately detect the disorder's characteristic autoimmunity with only small samples of blood, a feature that makes it ideal to screen pediatric patients, scientists in Australia report in a new study.
The assay provides a useful tool to confirm and track autoimmunity, the assault by turncoat forces of the immune system that destroy insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreatic islets of Langerhans. The attack is the central deleterious event in type 1 diabetes.
In an article published in Science Translational Medicine, a multidisciplinary team of medical investigators from throughout Australia describe a first-of-its-kind test that they developed and named BASTA, which stands for "β cell antigen-specific T cell assay."
The test serves as an alert to what ultimately becomes one of the most destructive and potentially lethal acts of collusion in human biology—the activity of two types of T cells against the pancreas. The pair of T cells conspire in a relentless assault against pancreatic β cells, forcing patient victims into lifelong exogenous insulin dependence.
In a new study led by scientists at the Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say they have determined that low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia, may promote a breakdown of the blood-retinal barrier, an important boundary that regulates the flow of nutrients, waste and water in and out of the retina.
The research, which investigated the phenomenon in diabetic mice, provides insights into the origin of diabetic retinopathy, specifically in patients with episodes of hypoglycemia. Diabetic retinopathy, a severe complication of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, can cause permanent vision damage if left untreated.
One thing that doesn’t get enough attention in diabetes news is the legal pressure mounting on insulin manufacturers. Some lawsuits allege insulin production costs ~$2 per vial but is sold for $300–$700. That’s wild. There’s a legal breakdown here if anyone’s curious about the case details and patient rights: https://federal-lawyer.com/injury-lawsuit/insulin-overpricing/
Last edited by 40lightyears on Wed Jun 04, 2025 6:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Scientists have unearthed surprising details about how our bodies handle insulin—the hormone that plays a crucial role in regulating blood sugar and developing diabetes. The discovery could lead to better treatment of type 2 diabetes and earlier diagnosis, potentially even before the disease develops.
In a new paper in the journal Cell, researchers from the University of Copenhagen found that all individuals have unique and varying degrees of insulin resistance at the molecular level.
The discovery of this 'molecular fingerprint' for insulin sensitivity challenges the traditional binary classification of people as being either healthy or living with type 2 diabetes.
"We found huge variation in insulin sensitivity, even among people considered healthy and among those diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. There are even some individuals living with type 2 diabetes who respond better to insulin than healthy individuals. Our study highlights the need to move beyond separating people into two boxes and recognize individual variation," says Associate Professor Atul Deshmukh from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, CBMR, at the University of Copenhagen.
