Lab-grown pancreas injected in arm could cure Type 1 diabetes

TYPE 1 diabetes could be cured in the future with a miniature lab-grown pancreas inserted into a patient’s forearm.

The treatment is in development in the US and would see insulin-producing cells injected underneath the skin to create the hormone that regulates blood-sugar levels.

More than 400,000 people in the UK are born with Type 1 diabetes and treatment for the incurable condition is limited to glucose tracking and regular insulin injections.

However, Minutia, a company in Silicon Valley, California, is working to use transplants as a cure. Katy Digovich, its chief executive, believes the therapy could be a game changer.

Ms Digovich, who has Type 1 diabetes herself, is leading a clinical trial which is transplanting islet cells from deceased donors into the arms of eight patients, with early data “encouraging”.

But with a limited amount of donors available Ms Digovich and her team are hoping to grow the mini organs in a lab by converting stem cells into specialised islet cells.

Pancreas cells created from stem cells have previously been shown to reverse Type 1 diabetes, but this procedure involved cells being implanted into a vein near the liver, a more difficult and risky procedure.

Ms Digovich is hoping that moving the source of the transplant to the arm would reduce the risk and make the transplant more accessible.

She and her team hope that the treatment could be a permanent fix and remove the need for constant management of the condition.

The company is also developing a nanosensor to be placed inside the forearm pancreas to monitor the health, status and efficiency of the organoid. The sensors would be able to spot a failing pancreas or identify if the body’s immune system was attacking the transplant and rejecting it.

Controlling the immune system is a concern for the developers who are trying to find ways to minimise risk of rejection while also reducing the need for immunosuppressant drugs, which come with side effects, such as increased risk of infection.

The nanosensors are 1,000 times thinner than a human hair and take the form of star-shaped pieces of gold covered in hundreds of strands of DNA that are dyed a certain colour to help doctors find the sensor.

The chunks of coloured DNA bind to genetic material in the body and the way they glow or appear to can reveal the status of the transplant. This would help to tell if the organ is inflamed, infected or cancerous, for example.