A breakthrough toward new treatments for Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes

A revolutionary study by Monash University in Australia has discovered a path to the renewal of insulin in pancreatic stem cells, a significant advance toward new therapies to treat Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.
Researchers successfully reactivated the pancreas stem cells of type 1 diabetic donors to become insulin-expressing and successfully resemble beta-like cells through a drug permitted by the US Food and Drug Administration but not presently approved for the treatment of diabetes.
Though requiring further work, in theory, the new method would allow insulin-producing cells destroyed in type 1 diabetics to be substituted with new insulin-generating cells.
The study, led by diabetes experts from the Monash Department of Diabetes, Dr Keith Al-Hasani, Professor Sam El-Osta and Dr Ishant Khurana, may lead to a possible treatment option for insulin-dependent diabetes, which is identified in nearly 4 million UK citizens, resulting in a lifetime of daily insulin injections, testing of blood glucose and, to substitute the insulin no longer produced by a damaged pancreas.
As the number of cases of diabetes across the world approaches five hundred million, researchers are scrambling for a restricted pool of treatments with unclear success.