Finally! Struggle against type 1 diabetes seems to be pay off through Gene Therapy

The world has been struggling against the most common disease type 1 diabetes since a long time. In type 1 diabetes, the body stops producing insulin as a result of which blood glucose levels keep on fluctuating and this can cause disorders like amputations, cardiovascular diseases, heart attack, hypoglycaemia, kidney problems, vision loss, and dyslipidemia as well. Till now there was no cure for the disease. But now the fight is showing signs of winnings, the researchers from Harvard and MIT have claimed that they have found a possible cure for type 1 diabetes in insulin-producing cells generated from stem cells.

The researchers have been studying in this direction for a long time, and they have enough evidence to conclude that type 1 diabetes can be controlled to a great extent with gene therapy in which the scientists use an adeno associated viral (AAV) vector to overexpress the genes for insulin and glucokinase in skeletal muscle in a canine model of diabetes mellitus.

Doug Melton, who led that study, generated the human islet cells used for the new research from human stem cells developed by him. He transplanted human islet cells into mice and those cells immediately started producing insulin. The research discovered that cells could be prevented from from being attacked by the body’s own immune system. Daniel Anderson, Associate Professor at Chemical Engineering and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science stated that they are excited by these results and are working hard to advance this technology to the clinic.

Sarah Johnson, UK director of policy and communication at JDRF commented, “if this study can be replicated in humans then one day we could potentially free people with Type 1 diabetes from a life of insulin injections”.