Kyoto University Hospital is looking to develop a treatment for severe Type 1 diabetes using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells reprogrammed to function as pancreatic islet cells, which produce the hormones that regulate glucose levels in the blood.
The hospital announced Monday that it will start a clinical trial to transplant such cells to three people as early as next February. If proven safe and effective, the study could pave the way for a treatment that would eliminate the need for Type 1 diabetes patients to get daily insulin shots. Currently, 100,000 to 140,000 people in Japan have the disease.
Pending the results of the clinical trial, researchers are hoping that a transplant treatment using iPS cell-derived pancreatic cells will be available in the 2030s.
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