Kind 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile or insulin-dependent diabetes, is a continual autoimmune situation by which the physique’s immune system mistakenly assaults and destroys the insulin-producing beta cells within the pancreas. This significant hormone, insulin, performs an important position in regulating blood sugar ranges and facilitating the entry of glucose into cells for vitality. On account of this autoimmune assault, people with kind 1 diabetes are left with a lifelong dependency on insulin to outlive.
Managing kind 1 diabetes is a day by day problem. Diabetics have to intently monitor their blood sugar ranges and inject themselves with insulin or use insulin pumps to assist normalize their glucose ranges. Regardless of their finest efforts, reaching constantly wholesome blood sugar ranges could be elusive as a result of they can not replicate the pancreas’ pure skill to control insulin launch in response to altering blood sugar ranges. This imbalance can result in critical problems over time, corresponding to heart problems, kidney issues, nerve injury, and imaginative and prescient impairment.
Bubbles of oxygen and hydrogen are being produced (📷: Claudia Liu and Dr. Siddharth Krishnan)
One potential various to frequent insulin injections or pump use is islet cell transplantation. On this process, islet cells, which include the insulin-producing beta cells, are transplanted into the affected person’s liver. Nevertheless, this method comes with its personal set of challenges. Sufferers who endure islet cell transplantation sometimes have to take immunosuppressive medication to stop their immune system from attacking the newly transplanted cells. These medication can have probably dangerous unwanted side effects and weaken the physique’s skill to struggle infections.
One other method is to encapsulate the islet cells to guard them from the immune system’s assaults. Whereas this methodology could be efficient in stopping rejection, it introduces one other drawback: the encapsulated cells ultimately run out of oxygen, resulting in their dying.
Brighter days could also be forward for diabetics, due to the latest work accomplished by a crew led by researchers at MIT. They’ve developed an implantable system containing a whole lot of hundreds of islet cells. The islet cells are encased to maintain them from interacting with the immune system. However the place this system differs from current options is in its onboard electronics that function a tiny oxygen manufacturing manufacturing unit that retains the islet cells wholesome.
The implant borrows a expertise initially supposed to generate hydrogen in gas cells — proton-exchange membranes. These membranes cut up the water that’s naturally discovered within the physique into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen harmlessly diffuses away, whereas the oxygen passes by an oxygen-permeable membrane to provide the islet cells with the life-sustaining substance.
The implant requires solely 2 volts of electrical energy for operation, and that is wirelessly transmitted to it through a magnetic coil positioned exterior the physique by resonant inductive coupling. The crew famous that these exterior parts may very well be worn as a pores and skin patch on the physique.
The absolutely assembled implant (📷: Claudia Liu and Dr. Siddharth Krishnan)
The prototype system was examined on diabetic mice, and was discovered to keep up protected ranges of blood sugars for a interval of 1 month, however the system may probably function usually for for much longer, due to the oxygen manufacturing unit. Additional experiments will likely be required to find out precisely how lengthy the implant will keep practical. Trying past the mouse trials, the researchers plan to construct a bigger system, in regards to the dimension of a stick of chewing gum, to be used in people with kind 1 diabetes.
With the early successes seen within the experiments, there’s hope for a future the place diabetics not solely now not have to inject insulin, but additionally the place their blood sugar ranges could be maintained at more healthy ranges. And that might forestall many ailments and different issues.
Additional down the highway, the researchers plan to research how they may leverage their expertise to ship different sorts of proteins to the physique that have to be administered over lengthy intervals of time.
