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China cures Type 1 diabetes using patient's own stem cells (www.scmp.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Scientists extracted fat cells from the patient, turned them into stem cells (induced pluripotent stem cells), then back into pancreatic islet cells now able to produce insulin. These functioning islet cells were then simply injected into the patient's abdominal muscles. Injection into the abdominal wall minimized invasiveness and avoided inflammation compared to previous practices of injection into the liver. The entire injection procedure took less than half an hour.

Because the cells are from the patient's own body, they don't need a compatible donor and experience no immune rejection to the transplant.

Afterwards, the patient's blood sugar levels became normal and they no longer needed external insulin.

Here's the research paper link: https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(24)01022-5

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Those poor pharma companies will suffer without being able to sell insulin. Considering three companies make almost all the insulin in the world, if you undercut that their CEOs may not even be able to get the latest model of yacht next year. Then the yacht companies will go under too!

It will be an absolute cascading catastrophe obviously. Therefore it is critically important they are able to sell insulin at several hundred dollars per vial!