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Medicine Biotech

Scientists Coax Human Embryonic Stem Cells Into Making Insulin 100

Posted by samzenpus from the closer-to-the-cure dept.
First time accepted submitter kwiecmmm writes A group of Harvard scientists reported that they have figured out how to turn embryonic stem cells into beta cells capable of producing insulin. This discovery could cure diabetes. From the article: "'It's a huge landmark paper. I would say it's bigger than the discovery of insulin,' says Jose Olberholzer, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois. 'The discovery of insulin was important and certainly saved millions of people, but it just allowed patients to survive but not really to have a normal life. The finding of Doug Melton would really allow to offer them really something what I would call a functional cure. You know, they really wouldn't feel anymore being diabetic if they got a transplant with those kind of cells.'"
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Scientists Coax Human Embryonic Stem Cells Into Making Insulin More

Scientists Coax Human Embryonic Stem Cells Into Making Insulin

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  • Is there anything stem cells *cannot* do? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Thursday October 09, 2014 @05:25PM (#48107173)
    Of course, when the problem you're facing is insulin resistance, this isn't going to help you all that much. ;)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by haruchai ( 17472 )

      Just eat a lot less carbs.

      • Buh buh the ADA recommendations *still* follow the food pyramid / carb heavy nonsense!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by suutar ( 1860506 )

        That'll help slow the progress of the resistance, but will it work for a really advanced case? That is, can the brain and muscles run directly on non-glucose fuels derived from fats, or is there a fat-glucose-consumption step that would still need some level of insulin to cause the cells to take in the glucose?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by haruchai ( 17472 )

          I don't know. A case that advanced probably need both a doctor & a dietitian / nutritionist involved.

        • Easy answer? No. Well the brain can't at least, the muscles can, but are put under a lot of stress. If you've heard of endurance athletes "hitting the wall" it's essentially just that - The brain can only run on glucose, so when blood sugar levels get dangerously low your body stops using it for powering muscles in order to keep your brain alive as long as possible. Muscles meanwhile aren't really designed to run on only fats, normally they're getting *at least* half their energy from sugars, so when the

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Absolutely false. Sorry, your info is old & anecdotes are not quite where you need them to be in light of decades of recent research. Ketogenic diet aka Nutritional Ketosis sustains the human body on ketone bodies derived from beta hydroxy buyerate. Low carb diets push the body toward using less carbs/glucose for fuel and more fats/ketone for fuel. Very Low Carb diets can be called ketogenic because they make us run on fat. There are super marathoners who are running 50+ miles in a ketogenic state and n
            • Not to mention gluconeogenesis, and the fact that the body can become *very* adept at pulling carbs out of even fiber rich sources. I'm highly insulin resistant, have removed pretty much alll starches from my diet, and am now working on getting processed foods out (which often use starches as filler).... It's rough, even with inslin, and very limited carb intake, I still struggle to stay under 200 blood sugar level.

      • Type 2 Diabetes: Reversible w/ Superior Nutrition (Score:4, Informative)

        by Paul Fernhout ( 109597 ) on Thursday October 09, 2014 @06:28PM (#48107583) Homepage

        Less of some types of carbs, yes, but more other stuff too: https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr... [drfuhrman.com]
        "Excess weight interferes with insulin's functions, and is the primary risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes. Therefore the most effective treatment for type 2 diabetes is significant weight loss. However, the primary mode of treatment by physicians today is glucose-lowering medication. These medications give a false sense of security, providing implicit permission to continue the same disease-causing diet and lifestyle that allowed diabetes to develop in the first place. Many of these medications promote weight gain -- making the patient more diabetic; most importantly, these medications do not prevent diabetes from progressing and causing complications. ...
        The key to diabetes reversal is superior nutrition and exercise. It may take a little extra effort, but avoiding the tragic complications of diabetes and a premature death is well worth it. My diabetes-reversal diet is vegetable-based with a high nutrient to calorie ratio, containing lots of greens and beans, other non-starchy vegetables, (such as mushrooms, eggplant, tomatoes and onions), raw nuts and seeds, and limited fresh fruit with no sweeteners or white flour products. When diabetics eat in this style, they lose their excess weight -- the cause of their diabetes -- quickly and easily, reducing or eliminating their need for medications and they also flood the body with disease-protective and healing micronutrients and phytochemicals that aid the body's recovery and self-repair mechanism."

        For Type II diabetics, such a diet with weight loss brings the body's ability to respond to glucose in line with the remaining capacity to make it as needed. Exercise that builds more muscles and that is done when sugar is spiking can also help in managing glucose levels.

        For Type I diabetics however, where the body can't produce much glucose at all if any, this improved diet/exercise is not enough, even if it can improve the situation some what as far as reducing complications. For Type I diabetics, this sort of breakthrough with stem cells, if it works, would be truly amazing.

        Sometimes type I diabetics are really misdiagnosed type II, and vice versa, so there is a small level of confusion here where sometimes diet works when you would not expect etc..

        BTW, vitamin D deficiency (from lack of natural sunlight) may be involved with the autoimmune response that could cause type I diabetes or perhaps make type II worse.

        More from Furhman:
        https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr... [drfuhrman.com]
        http://www.amazon.com/The-End-... [amazon.com]

        More from others:
        http://www.rawfor30days.com/ [rawfor30days.com]
        http://www.fatsickandnearlydea... [fatsickandnearlydead.com]
        https://www.drmcdougall.com/he... [drmcdougall.com]
        http://articles.mercola.com/si... [mercola.com]
        http://www.dailymail.co.uk/hea... [dailymail.co.uk]
        http://drhyman.com/blog/2010/0... [drhyman.com]

        The deeper issue is that our brains and microbiomes are adapted for a scarcity of refined carbs, and we struggle with the abundance of cheap ones:
        http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra... [drfuhrman.com]
        "Scientific evidence suggests that the re-sensitization of taste nerves takes between 30 and 90 days of consistent exposure to less stimulating foods. This means

        • The key to diabetes reversal is superior nutrition and exercise. It may take a little extra effort,

          I just love phrases like this. "A little extra effort' indeed. Pretty much every diabetic patient gets counseled to lose weight. They get sent to dieticians. They get nagged at by their insurance company hot line. They don't lose weight.

          Hence the drugs which do pretty much what you say they do and have some real, but hardly earthshattering, effect on the disease. If it were 'just' a matter of losing weight then we would 1) not be in the middle of an obesity and diabetes epidemic and 2) not having this

          • Well, the alternative would seem to involve somehow subverting free will. Or maybe a pill that makes sugar taste disgusting. (actually, that might work...)

            Personally I say let the diabetics eat themselves to an early grave - they knew the risks, they knew the solution, if they chose junkfood over a long healthy life then that's their choice. Maybe it's even the choice that maximizes their total lifetime happiness. But they'd better not come crying to me when Death comes knocking on their door - I have ver

            • Honestly, the hardest thing about subverting free will is actually chasing down a demonstrable instance of it to subvert.

              The business of modifying people's behaviors and decisions, on the other hand, at least at the "all of the people some of the time or some of the people all of the time" population level is absolutely ubiquitous, rather effective, and at least as old as civilization.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rich0 ( 548339 )

          Tragically, most people are totally unaware that they are only a few weeks of discipline away from being able to comfortably maintain healthful dietary habits--and to keep away from the products that can result in the destruction of their health. Instead, most people think that if they were to eat more healthfully, they would be condemned to a life of greatly reduced gustatory pleasure--thinking that the process of Phase IV will last forever.

          This meshes with my own observations when I switched to a low-carb diet. I found that I'd eat and still "feel" hungry. The low-carb solution is to just allow yourself to eat more in this case, but to still stay away from the carbs. Your brain then learns that cramming more food in your mouth no longer produces the sensations it is looking for, and it becomes easier to not eat so much. I felt a bit like a rat in a Skinner box pushing the button and not getting any food, and just like the rat in the Skinn

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rich0 ( 548339 )

        Just eat a lot less carbs.

        Certainly it helps, but it isn't really a cure once you already have it. Now, I'll grant that you're MUCH better of cutting out carbs than you are if you don't, but if you already have fairly severe insulin resistance you'll probably still be on medications for life unless something changes, and this particular advance probably isn't it.

        Now, cutting down the carbs early in life is probably a good way to avoid ever having insulin resistance in the first place.

  • If they're made from someone else, the patient has to take immunosuppresive drugs. That sets them up for weird infections. If they're made from the patient's own cells, they'd still have to deal with the autoimmune response that destroyed the original beta cells in the first place (assuming type 1 diabetes).

    • If they're made from someone else, the patient has to take immunosuppresive drugs.

      Depends on the quality of the match. For my bone marrow transplant, they found a truly excellent match (no, it wasn't from a relative). I'm two years past the transplant, and haven't taken immunosuppressive drugs for seven or eight months now. No ill effects, not even any GVHD (Graft Vs. Host Disease), which used to manifest as rashes on the backs of my hands/wrists fairly regularly....

    • There's been a few things made from adult stem cells. This may end up being one of them after a bit more work, so that then cells from the intended recipient can be taken, altered, grown and transplanted. Then it's functionally like a skin graft.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rich0 ( 548339 )

        There's been a few things made from adult stem cells. This may end up being one of them after a bit more work, so that then cells from the intended recipient can be taken, altered, grown and transplanted. Then it's functionally like a skin graft.

        Sure, but whether this works still depends greatly on what caused the diabetes in the first place.

        Type 1 diabetics are generally believed to start out with functional beta cells, but their body destroys them. If you just implant more functional beta cells, the body may very well destroy those as well. If the problem is autoimmune in nature and the target is the glucose receptors on the cells or something like that, then in order for the cell to be functional as a beta cell it would need to be vulnerable t

        • Joint replacements are typically for a decade or two - a common failure mode is the vast number of tiny bits of bone that get ground off when the metal scrapes them off get attacked by the immune system and then it starts eating into the bone where the joint is anchored, eventually leading to it being too weak and replacement is needed on fresh bone, requiring a larger joint. Similarly getting a decade or two out of beta cells is still a pretty big deal. It doesn't have to last fifty or seventy years per
  • that ancient sci-fi novel which has transplants (the old-school equivalent of stem cells) promoting the death penalty for all crimes, due to a need for parts.

  • Congratulations! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Congratulations to Melton and crew for this amazing discovery. The pessimist in me, though, says that this will never make it to market: Why would pharma companies want to make a once-off sale to diabetics that would cure them in 10 days when they can continue to milk money out of them by selling products and supplies that need to be used multiple times per day for life?

    • so depressingly likely

    • This wouldn't be a one-off cure for type 1. Type 1 is an autoimmune disease. Any replacement pancreas would get trashed same as the originals did. You'd either need to keep replacing them or take immunosupressants for the rest of your life.

      • Getting an autograft yearly would be a good alternative, for type 1. It might amount to a sample drawn then an injection a month (and 100K$) later.

    • You do realize that Big Pharma doesn't cover the entire planet and that other countries, including some of those weird little places that have SOCIALIZED MEDICINE have perfectly capable research and drug production facilities. Some of those countries would be quite happy with a permanent cure or even long term suppression of the disease. It would save them money and help their constituents.

      So loosen that ol tin foil. Breathe deep.

      • Probably true. The real problem is in funding the research in the first place - you'll have investors lining up to fund your development of the next big thing in treatments for balding or erectile dysfunction - those are huge markets in which a recurring treatment can make ridiculous profits, especially if it's substantially more effective than existing treatments. An actual cure for cancer, diabetes, etc. on the other hand would replace a steady cash cow with a one-time treatment. Why would a big pharma

      • Even if they did, a cure is only less profitable than daily maintenance treatment if you price the cure such that the profit you make from selling it is less than the net present value of the profit made on all sales of the maintenance treatment across the patient's expected lifetime(future profits are discounted because you don't get the money upfront and because of risk: the patient might die, switch suppliers, be cured by someone else, lose insurance and just suffer without, etc.)

        Given the lifetime co
  • This story is really saying that this could cure juvenile diabetes -- it does not address adult-onset diabetes. Adult onset diabetes has a lot to do with insulin resistance in all of the cells in the body, and cannot get cured by simply pumping in more and more insulin.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by armanox ( 826486 )

      Except the terms "Juvenile-onset' and 'Adult-onset' only describe when you became diabetic, not which type you have. As someone with Adult-onset Type I, proper terminology is very important when discussing so that the correct disorder (Type I vs Type II) is being discussed.

  • says Jose Olberholzer, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois. 'The discovery of insulin was important and certainly saved millions of people, but it just allowed patients to survive but not really to have a normal life. ...'

    Sure, having to test yourself several times a day and shoot yourself at least daily isn't technically normal but people whose diabetes is under control with insulin and who are otherwise healthy can lead productive lives just like the rest of us.

    If you want to talk about a medical treatment that " just allowed patients to survive but not really to have a normal life" talk about the iron lung or something along those lines.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by armanox ( 826486 )

      The insulin tends to extend the period of a 'normal' life for a while, yes, until the later complications set in...(diabetic retinopathy, ESRD, etc)

      • What, so it's better to just die? My uncle had diabetes his whole life and kept himself fit, ate right, and followed the rules. He died at 80+ years of old age with no 'complications'. Most of the people, if not all, who had complications from diabetes didn't follow the rules. I'm sure that's not always the case, but these things are far from absolutely certain.

    • Something that you take care of in less time than it takes to re-heat your coffee in the microwave must seem like such a huge burden to those who aren't used to it.

      Testing now takes a miniscule amount of blood - not the huge blobs it took a couple of decades ago, and not the pee strips before that. The results take seconds, not a minute like the first meters. The meter is ridiculously small - any smaller and you'd lose it, not like the original bulky ones that wouldn't fit into a pocket.

      And since there'

  • ...that before long, VHS cells will be developed and they'll kill off the Beta cells.

  • ....aaaaand it'll be gone.

    (for "bioethics zealots" read: "GSK shills")

  • I thought one of the problems with diabetes was not having the _right_ amount of insulin, corresponding to the levels of blood sugar?

    I've seen the effects of too much insulin, and it ain't pretty. (It's called hypoglycemia, folks.) So just stuffing a bunch of insulin producer cells in a person's system is not going to be the solution.

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