Insulin Reactor for Diabetes Patients

Cell Reactor provides diabetics with insulin

01/12/2014

For diabetics, it could become possible in the future to remedy their insulin deficiency with a novel cell reactor. Dresden physicians used a can of insulin-producing donor cells to a diabetes patient.

Resolve lack of insulin
Hundreds of thousands of diabetics often have to cope with their illness from early childhood. For them, this means regularly measuring the blood sugar level and injecting the hormone insulin. But in the future, a novel cell reactor could help patients with type 1 diabetes to correct their lack of blood sugar-lowering insulin, like the „pharmacy magazine“ (1/2014 A) reports.

Cells protected against immune system
One patient was given a can of medicine from the Dresden University Hospital containing insulin-producing donor cells. It is particularly important that the cells in this reactor are protected from the patient's immune system. This prevents repulsion.

Around 300,000 Germans with type 1 diabetes
Congenital diabetes (type 1) is an autoimmune disease in which the body's own immune system attacks and destroys the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas through an inflammatory reaction (insulitis). As a result, insulin deficiency increasingly arises, which leads to a lack of substrate in the cells, to an increase in blood sugar, to hyperacidity of the blood, to loss of water and nutrients and to rapid weight loss. If the person does not receive any treatment, a life-threatening clinical picture can develop, the ketoacidotic coma. The cause of the disease is the involvement of many factors that are genetically determined by environmental factors. Currently, about 300,000 Germans suffer from type 1 diabetes. (Ad)

Image: Michael Horn