I was under the impression that stem cell treatments don’t require immunosuppression. Really seems to limit the upside of this breakthrough treatment.
Type 1 diabetes is caused by the immune system attacking the cells that produce insulin. In a new diabetic it takes on the order of 6-18 months to kill enough cells to make someone diabetic. Replacing the cells would be a very temporary fix. I do wonder —- if this technology was arbitrarily cheap, would there be a downside to just “topping up” the cells every month or so? Or would stoking a constant immune response cause other issues?
Now that they found the messaging to cause stem cells to produce insulin why can't they find a way to do it with ones own stem cells, that the body would hopefully not reject?
But the immune system was already rejecting his own insulin creating cells. This is what caused the type-1 diabetes in the first place. Presumably it would continue to do that with the new cells.