A coin-sized device instead of constant insulin injections. Without needing a battery or taking immunosuppressive drugs for fear of immune system reactions.
That’s the promise against type 1 diabetes that comes from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, where some researchers have developed a small implantable device capable of controlling blood glucose levels, at least in the mice where it was tested.
But there are all the conditions for it to work in humans as well, because it was designed precisely to overcome all the obstacles that similar devices or strategies have today.
The idea of replacing insulin injections with transplants of cells capable of producing the hormone directly in the body – the same cells destroyed in patients with type 1 diabetes – has been around for some time. But, although pancreatic islet transplants are already a reality, the result is not always the one hoped for.
The problems are different, from the need to take immunosuppressants to prevent the immune system from attacking the transplanted cells, to the need to provide the cells with an adequate oxygen supply system.
The brainchild of MIT researchers, officially presented on the pages Pnas, was to build a small device capable of producing oxygen without the need for batteries. To do this, scientists use a special membrane capable of splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.
The energy needed to operate comes from the outside, thanks to a small magnetic coil that transmits to an antenna that can be housed in a kind of patch, MIT explains. In this way it is possible to guarantee both isolation from the immune system and oxygen supply at the same time.
The device, tested on mice with diabetes with subcutaneous transplantation, works for at least a month and without the need for immunosuppressive therapy.
The idea now is to expand the tests to reach humans, where it could be used not only against type 1 diabetes, but also as a cell therapy against blood or neurodegenerative diseases, the authors conclude.
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2023-10-02 04:43:00
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