Could Stem Cell Therapy Cure Diabetes?

In the United States alone, over 34 million people suffer from diabetes, with over 1.5 million new diagnoses each year. About 1.6 million Americans have type 1 diabetes, which requires insulin therapy, but it’s extremely expensive and often hard for patients to regulate. Even with therapy, diabetes is an extremely dangerous disease with an astonishing death rate. Naturally, some researchers have made it their mission to find a cure. And it seems like they may have found one in an unlikely place: stem cell therapy.

Why is Diabetes so Hard to Treat?

Diabetes affects the body’s ability to use the hormone insulin to process sugar. This can occur in one of two ways: Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition that causes the body to attack the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Type 2 diabetes leaves the pancreas intact, but the body rejects its own insulin, rendering it less effective. Whereas type 2 diabetes can sometimes be managed with changes to diet and exercise habits, type 1 requires insulin injections. Both diabetes types are serious and both have scary statistics for treatment and survival. Though it may seem like we have insulin and can just treat them effectively, that's not often the case.

First, getting insulin levels right can be tricky. There are multiple types, each with different action lengths:

• Rapid-acting insulin takes about 15 minutes to start working, with levels reaching their peak about an hour in.
• Short-acting insulin requires about 30 minutes to take effect, reaching peak levels about 2 to 3 hours in.
• Intermediate-acting insulin starts working after about 2 to 4 hours, with levels reaching their peak anywhere between 4 and 12 hours after that. 
• Long-acting insulin takes several hours to take effect, acting slowly over 24 hours.

Finding the right balance isn’t always easy, even among seasoned diabetics. Imagine trying to anticipate curves fifteen minutes ahead while driving a car. Yeah, it's tricky, right? And to make it worse, not enough insulin can lead to ketoacidosis, which can cause a dangerous buildup of proteins in the blood and certain organs. Prolonged low insulin levels can also cause severe dehydration, which may eventually lead to a coma or worse. But not enough is only half of the problem as too much insulin can cause seizures, coma and death—sound familiar? So the balance is tricky and complicated, and dangerous.

To add insult to injury, insulin prices are often incredibly high. Diabetes patients spend a total of $327 billion every year to manage the disease, making proper maintenance difficult, financially challenging, or even completely out of reach, for some people. This alone leads people to try to ration their supplies—and you can imagine how dangerous that can be.

How Stem Cells Could Cure Diabetes

Numerous research facilities have been working hard to find more practical, sustainable ways to treat diabetes. For type 1 diabetics there may be great news on the horizon. Finding techniques to replace lost and damaged pancreatic cells seems the most logical route, but donor cells require the use of anti-rejection medications, which often create a whole new set of problems. With less chance of rejection, stem cells may be the most reasonable solution. And we're getting closer and closer to that reality.

A study published in Metabolism showed numerous approaches to stem cell therapy that could allow diabetes sufferers to live more normal lives. Each process is extensive and complicated, however, so perfecting a good technique hasn’t been easy. But researchers at Washington University may have finally successfully programmed stem cells to function as normal pancreatic islets. Transplanted in diabetic mice, the cells were able to cure the animals’ disease, and, even better, this included even those with severe manifestations.

The research looks incredibly promising, but stem cell therapy is still in its infancy, so we have a long way to go before researchers can try these techniques in humans. These cells are less likely to suffer from rejection, but they can still go awry. For example, stem cell transplants sometimes form teratomas, that is, tumors that can develop hair and teeth, instead of the intended tissue. Some people also have ethical issues with the use of embryonic stem cells in this capacity and may opt-out of these procedures for that reason. Researchers will need to overcome these obstacles and more before stem cell therapy is a real option—but the results so far are incredibly exciting.

New treatment options may be on the horizon, with diabetes being just one of numerous diseases stem cell therapy could eventually cure. Newer techniques may be able to overcome some of the limitations and ethical concerns currently holding us back and we may be on the cusp of an entirely new phase in science. The possibilities seem to be worth the wait.

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