Beta-ing diabetes

Semma Therapeutics Inc. is developing a cell therapy for Type I diabetes that could eliminate the need for daily insulin injections and blood glucose monitoring. The islet-like clusters of mature insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells could generate insulin more quickly upon implantation compared to a more advanced cell therapy that uses progenitor pancreatic cells.

Type I diabetics can be treated with insulin-producing islet cells isolated from a cadaver pancreas, but there is a shortage of suitable donor pancreases. Researchers have thus been exploring ways to use stem cells to generate a source of allogeneic glucose-responsive insulin-producing beta cells...