Stem cell therapy for insulin-dependent diabetes: Are we still on the road?

Abstract

In insulin-dependent diabetes, the islet β cells do not produce enough insulin and the patients must receive exogenous insulin to control blood sugar. However, there are still many deficiencies in exogenous insulin supplementation. Therefore, the replacement of destroyed functional β cells with insulin-secreting cells derived from functional stem cells is a good idea as a new therapeutic idea. This review introduces the development schedule of mouse and human embryonic islets. The differences between mouse and human pancreas embryo development were also listed. Accordingly to the different sources of stem cells, the important research achievements on the differentiation of insulin-secreting β cells of stem cells and the current research status of stem cell therapy for diabetes were reviewed. Stem cell replacement therapy is a promising treatment for diabetes, caused by defective insulin secretion, but there are still many problems to be solved, such as the biosafety and reliability of treatment, the emergence of tumors during treatment, untargeted differentiation and autoimmunity, etc. Therefore, further understanding of stem cell therapy for insulin is needed.

Keywords: Diabetes mellitus; Differentiation; Stem cell therapy; Transplantation; β cell.

Figure 1

Application of induced pluripotent stem cells in the treatment of diabetes mellitus. The In insulin-dependent diabetes patients, induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs)-derived β cells can be induced by autologous IPSCs and then directly or indirectly transplanted back into the body after encapsulation to achieve the effect of diabetes treatment. For patients with monogenic diabetes, such as Wolfram syndrome patients, IPSCs-derived β cells with correct coding can also be obtained after CRISPR-Cas9 gene modification technology and then transplanted. IPSCs: Induced pluripotent stem cells.