Stem Cells from Diabetic Patients Coaxed to Become Insulin-Secreting Cells

May 11, 2016

(Medical Xpress) – Signaling a potential new approach to treating diabetes, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Harvard University have produced insulin-secreting cells from stem cells derived from patients with type 1 diabetes. People with this form of diabetes can’t make their own insulin and require regular insulin injections to control their blood sugar. The new discovery suggests a personalized treatment approach to diabetes may be on the horizon—one that relies on the patients’ own stem cells to manufacture new cells that make insulin.