A 25-year-old woman with type 1 diabetes started producing her own insulin less than three months after receiving a transplant of reprogrammed stem cells1. She is the first person with the disease to be treated using cells that were extracted from her own body.
“I can eat sugar now,” said the woman, who lives in Tianjing, on a call with Nature. It has been more than a year since the transplant, and, she says, “I enjoy eating everything — especially hotpot.” The woman asked to remain anonymous to protect her privacy.
James Shapiro, a transplant surgeon and researcher at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, says the results of the surgery are stunning. “They’ve completely reversed diabetes in the patient, who was requiring substantial amounts of insulin beforehand.”
Always feels good to come across an uplifiting news story that isn’t also secretly dystopian. Cheers and Happy Friday.
The dystopian part is stem cell therapy is illegal because… reasons?
Fair point.
Effing religious nuts.
Only embryonic stem cells. This is using induced pluripotent stem cells which are not illegal.
In the early days it was an abortion-adjacent topic, which made it an easy target to vilify to rile up support from single-issue voters. Now a large portion of society will hate anything involving stem cells forever, regardless of facts. Once the culture war starts, it’s hard to get it to stop.
It’s only illegal in some places. And even that is kind of weak. There are stem cell clinics you can go to in almost every large metropolis in America if you have the money.
The sciences are really my last bastion of hope these days. I’m constantly amazed at the rate of discovery these days and how they at least show a glimmer of hope for the future.