After years of struggling towards finding a cure for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, Japanese scientists have made a huge breakthrough that points toward a cure for both diseases located right in a patient’s own brain. Tomoko Kuwabara, a scientist from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba Science City, Japan, led the project in which stem cells were extracted from parts of the rats’ brains and then were used to cure their diabetes.
Neural tissue was extracted from either the hippocampus (which controls memory) or the olfactory bulb (which controls smell) of the rats’ brains through their noses and stem cells were extracted out of the neural tissue. Human protein Wnt3a, which stimulates insulin production, was then applied to the cells. After maturing for two weeks, scientists laid a collagen sheet (collagen is the main structural protein found in connective tissue) infused with the modified stem cells on top of the affected rats’ pancreases to see if insulin production would continue and the disease would be cured. After seven days with the implant, blood glucose levels in the rats returned to normal and the diabetes was considered cured.
Scientists left the collagen sheet on the rats’ pancreases for five months, at which time they removed the sheet to see if the rats would revert back to their diabetic state. Although they did revert to diabetic insulin and blood glucose levels after the sheet was removed, scientists are still confident that if the collagen sheet is left implanted, the stem cells have the potential to cure diabetes for good. Their next step is to set up trials in humans to see if stem cells from the same parts of their brains can be used to cure human diabetes by the same process. The cure could help improve quality of life for many people living with either type of the disease.
