A team of medical researchers affiliated with a large number of institutions in China has functionally cured a female patient with type 1 diabetes by injecting her with programmed stem cells.

For their study published in the journal Cell, the group extracted cells from the patient reverted them to a pluripotent state, programmed them to grow into pancreatic islets, and then injected them back into her abdomen.

Over the past decade, research revolving around stem cells has advanced dramatically. Scientists have programmed them to become organoids, organs and biological tissue. They have also been used to treat conditions including muscle damage and sickle cell disease. In this new study, the researchers used them to replace pancreatic islets lost to an immune response gone wrong, resulting in type 1 diabetes.

For unknown reasons, some people experience an immune attack that results in the destruction of islets in the pancreas that are responsible for making insulin. These incidents typically happen during the teen years, which is why the disease is also known as juvenile diabetes.

Because the islets are destroyed, any cure for the disease must involve replacing the islets somehow, either through transplantation from a donor, or in this new example, by using the person's own cells as the basis for creating pluripotent stem cells, which can be programmed to grow into replacement islets.

In this new effort, the researchers collected cells from three type 1 diabetes patients—all the cells were reverted to a pluripotent state and then programmed to grow into pancreatic islets. The researchers note that they modified the standard approach by exposing the cells to certain molecules rather than introducing proteins. The treatment process for the patients was staggered over time so that findings from the first patient could be applied to the second and then the third.

In a procedure lasting approximately 30 minutes, the researchers injected 1.5 million of the islets they had grown into the abdomen of the first patient, a 25-year-old woman. Placing them in the abdomen allowed for easy monitoring and removal if necessary. Two and a half months later, testing showed the patient was producing enough of her own insulin to stop injections.

After a year, she was still producing her own insulin. The research team notes that the patient was already receiving immunosuppressant drugs due to a prior liver transplant; thus, it is still not known if her immune system will replicate the type of attack that led her to have type 1 diabetes in the first place.