2023-09-20 16:15:29
Most patients with type 1 diabetes need to carefully monitor their blood glucose levels and inject insulin at least once a day. However, although this serves to keep the problem at bay, it is never as efficient as the work done under optimal conditions by a pancreas.
A better alternative to insulin injections would be to transplant cells that produce insulin whenever they detect increases in the patient’s blood glucose levels. Some diabetic patients have been transplanted with pancreatic islet cells taken from human cadavers, which can achieve long-term control of diabetes; However, these patients have to take immunosuppressive drugs to prevent their body from rejecting the implanted cells.
More recently, similar success was achieved with stem cell-derived pancreatic islet cells, but patients who receive these cells also need to take immunosuppressive drugs.
Another possibility, which could avoid the need for immunosuppressive drugs, is to encapsulate the transplanted cells within a flexible device that protects them from the immune system. However, finding a reliable supply of oxygen for these encapsulated cells has proven challenging.
Some experimental devices, including one that has been tested in clinical trials, incorporate an oxygen chamber that can deliver oxygen to cells, but this chamber must be recharged periodically. Other researchers have developed implants that include chemical reagents capable of generating oxygen, but these reagents also run out over time.
To overcome this obstacle and achieve a system that does not depend on external supplies, a team including, among others, Siddharth Krishnan and Daniel Anderson, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, has designed a new implantable device that does not Not only does it house hundreds of thousands of insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells, it also has its own oxygen factory, which generates oxygen by breaking down water vapor within the body.
The decomposition of water releases hydrogen, which diffuses harmlessly through the body, and oxygen, which ends up in a storage chamber, from which it is supplied to the cells of the pancreatic islets.
The implantable device designed at MIT houses hundreds of thousands of pancreatic islet cells along with their own oxygen factory to keep them healthy. The photograph shows two units of this device. (Photo: Felice Frankel / MIT. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
In addition, the new device does not need cables or batteries. The decomposition of this water vapor requires a small voltage (about 2 volts), which is generated by a phenomenon known as resonant inductive coupling. A precisely tuned coil located outside the body transmits energy to a small flexible antenna inside the device, allowing wireless power transfer. This external coil could be worn as a patch attached to the patient’s skin.
After building their device, about the size of a small coin, the researchers tested it on diabetic mice. One group of diabetic mice received the device with the oxygen-generating system, while the other received a device containing pancreatic islet cells without supplemental oxygen. The devices were implanted just under the skin, in mice with fully functional immune systems.
The researchers found that the mice in which the oxygen-generating device was implanted were able to maintain normal blood glucose levels, comparable to those of healthy animals. However, the mice in which the device was implanted without an oxygen generator had their blood sugar levels rise noticeably within a couple of weeks. (Source: NCYT from Amazings)
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