This has already been a productive year for diabetes research. Earlier this month, scientists from UCSF and the Gladstone Institutes successfully made functional human pancreatic beta cells from skin, providing a new and robust method for generating large quantities of cells to replace those lost in patients suffering from type 1 diabetes.

Today marks another breakthrough in the development of stem cell therapies for diabetes. Scientists from MIT and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute published a new method in Nature Medicine that encapsulates and protects stem cell-derived pancreatic beta cells in a way that prevents them from being attacked by the immune system after transplantation.

Protecting transplanted cells from the immune system

Stem cell therapy holds promise for diabetes for a number of reasons. First, scientists now have the ability to generate large numbers of insulin producing pancreatic beta cells from human skin and stem cells. This obviates the need for donor beta cells, which are always in short supply and high demand. Second, there’s the issue of the immune system. Transplanting beta cells from a donor into a patient will trigger an immunological reaction, which can only be abated by a lifetime regimen of immunosuppressive drugs.

One way that scientists have addressed the issue of immune rejection is to transplant stem cell-derived beta cells in a protected capsule. A CIRM-funded company called ViaCyte has developed a medical device that acts like a replacement pancreas but is surgically implanted under the skin. It contains human beta cells derived from embryonic stem cells and has a membrane barrier that allows only certain molecules to pass in and out of the device. This way, the foreign pancreatic cells are shielded from the immune system, but they can still respond to changing blood sugar levels in the patient by secreting insulin into the blood stream.

Another way that scientists trick the immune system in diabetes patients uses a similar strategy but instead of a medical device that protects a large population of cells, they encapsulate individual islets (clusters of beta cells) using biomaterials.

However, previous attempts using a biomaterial called alginate to encapsulate islets caused an immune response in the form of fibrosis, or scar tissue, and cell death. Additionally, transplanted alginate microspheres were only able to achieve glycemic control, or control of blood sugar levels, temporarily in animal models.

In the Nature Medicine study, the scientists developed a new method for beta cell encapsulation where they used a chemically modified version of the alginate microspheres – triazole-thiomorpholine dioxide (TMTD) – that didn’t cause an immune reaction and was able to maintain glycemic control in mice that had diabetes.

New protective method makes diabetic mice insulin independent

The scientists tested the conventional alginate microspheres and the modified TMTD-alginate microspheres containing embryonic stem cell-derived human beta islets in diabetic mice.

They found that the conventional smaller alginate microspheres caused fibrosis while larger TMTD-alginate microspheres did not. They observed that the modified TMTD-alginate microspheres were able to achieve glycemic control for over 70 days after transplantation while conventional microspheres didn’t perform as well.

The scientists also looked at the immune response to both types of alginate spheres. They saw lower numbers of immune cells and less fibrosis surrounding the transplanted TMTD microspheres compared to the conventional microspheres.

The final studies were the icing on the cake. The asked whether the modified TMTD microspheres were able to maintain long-term glycemic control or insulin independence, which would mean sustaining blood glucose levels in diabetic mice for over 100 days. They studied diabetic mice that received TMTD microspheres for 174 days. At 150 days, they performed a glucose test and saw that the diabetic mice were just as good at regulating glucose levels as normal mice. Furthermore, after 6 months, these mice showed no build up of fibrotic tissue, indicating that the modified microspheres weren’t causing an immune response and these mice didn’t need immunosuppressive drugs.

What the experts had to say…

This study was picked up by STATnews, which also mentioned another related study published in Nature Biotechnology that tested various alginate derivatives in rodent and monkey models of diabetes.

Julia Greenstein, vice president of discovery research at JDRF, discussed the implications of both studies with STATnews:

“This is really the first demonstration of the ability of these novel materials in combination with a stem-cell derived beta cell to reverse diabetes in an animal model. Our goal is to bring that kind of biological cure across the spectrum of type 1 diabetes.”

First author on both studies, Arturo Vegas, also gave his thoughts and discussed future applications:

Arturo Vegas

“From very early on, we were getting great success. Everything kind of fell into place. You saw less foreign body response. The human beta cells survived exquisitely well. I think we’ve advanced the ball pretty far, almost as far you could get in an academic environment. The talk is shifting toward doing something clinically.”

According to STATnews, Vegas and his team are working on tests now in monkey models. “Vegas said that if the primate studies are successful, the next step will be developing a therapy to be used in people.”

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Related Links:

• Cell therapy in protective bubble offers hope for diabetes fix – STATnews
• Type 1 diabetes trial whiteboard video style (CIRM blog + Video)
• Diabetes fact sheet