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Treating type 1 diabetes and some cases of type 2 diabetes required painful and frequent insulin injections or a mechanical insulin pump for insulin infusion. Researchers have developed artificial cells that automatically release insulin into the bloodstream when glucose levels rise.
The artificial beta cells ABCs mimic the functions of the body’s natural glucose-controllers, the insulin-secreting beta cells of the pancreas. The loss or dysfunction of these cells causes type 1 diabetes and many cases of type 2 diabetes.
The idea is that the ABCs could be subcutaneously inserted into patients, which would be replaced every few days, or by a painless and disposable skin patch. A single injection of the ABCs into diabetic mice lacking beta cells quickly normalized the animals’ blood glucose levels and kept those levels normal for five days.
The current insulin treatments can not control blood glucose levels automatically and efficiently, as normal insulin-secreting pancreatic cells do. Transplants of pancreatic cells can solve that problem in some cases. However, such cell transplants are expensive, it require donor cells that are often in short supply, require immune-suppressing drugs, and often fail due to the destruction of the transplanted cells.
Smart artificial beta cells could lead to new diabetes treatment. The ABCs showed a rapid responsiveness to excess glucose levels in lab-dish tests and in diabetic mice without beta cells. The mice went from hyperglycemic to normoglycemic within an hour, and they remained normoglycemic for five days. Control mice injected with no-insulin ABCs remained hyperglycemic.
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