{"id":36830,"date":"2014-10-09T13:14:08","date_gmt":"2014-10-09T17:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?post_type=feature&p=36830"},"modified":"2016-01-11T04:41:54","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T09:41:54","slug":"on-the-road-to-a-type-1-diabetes-cure-melton-lab-creates-functioning-beta-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=36830","title":{"rendered":"On the Road to a Type 1 Diabetes Cure: Melton Lab Creates Functioning Beta Cells"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last fall, my daughter, Bisi, and I went to a talk by Doug Melton, a co-director of\u00a0 Harvard\u2019s Stem Cell Institute who for the past twenty years has been working to understand and cure type 1 diabetes, the disease that afflicts both of his children (as it does Bisi). At the time, he said that his lab was \u201cin the red zone, almost over the goal line, in terms of making perfect [beta] cells.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, with the publication today of an article in the journal <\/a>Cell<\/a>, <\/em>it appears that Melton\u2019s lab has reached that line. Using human embryonic stem cells as a base, the lab has pioneered a process that can reproduce human, insulin-producing beta cells on a large scale. As Melton said in a conference call with journalists, \u201cWhat we\u2019re reporting on is something that I think was obvious to many as a possible solution but just turned out to be difficult to achieve, and that is the creation of human beta cells that properly respond to sugar or glucose and secrete the right amount of insulin.\u201d Beyond that, and just as essential, Melton\u2019s lab has figured out a way to produce these cells in the vast quantities required for transplantation into people and for testing out pharmaceuticals in the lab. In describing the work laid out in\u00a0Cell,\u00a0<\/em>Jose Oberholzer\u2014an associate professor of surgery, endocrinology and diabetes, and bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago\u2014told Rob Stein of National Public Radio, “It’s a huge landmark paper. I would say it’s bigger than the discovery of insulin. The discovery of insulin was important and certainly saved millions of people, but it just allowed patients to survive but not really to have a normal life. The finding of Doug Melton would\u2026 offer them really something what I would call a functional cure. You know, they really wouldn’t feel anymore being diabetic if they got a transplant with those kind of cells.”<\/p>\n

To get to this point has required fifteen years of work on the part of Melton and about fifty other colleagues, testing out 70 different chemical compounds in 150 different combinations to figure out exactly how to instruct a stem cell to become a beta cell. He described the work as empirical science, not discovery science, in that in the former you are \u201ccommitted to finding the answer to something and try all different methods to achieve it\u2026. It wasn\u2019t any great intellectual insight, I didn\u2019t get an idea in the shower. It was strategic, systematic hard work over a long period of time.\u201d He called the work a personal quest that began about twenty years ago, when his six-month-old son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. (His daughter was diagnosed several years later at age 14.) \u201cSince that time I have done what any parent would do\u2014which is to say, I\u2019m not going to put up with this, I want to find a better way.\u201d Melton described his children\u2019s calm reaction when he told them he had succeeded in creating a renewable supply of beta cells. \u201cI think like all kids, they always assumed that if I said I\u2019d do this, I\u2019d do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Doug Melton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Melton is not the first researcher to create a functioning beta cell in the lab. What separates this work is the road map it provides for creating a potentially unlimited supply of beta cells, which could be used both to implant into people who now need to take insulin (those with type 1 diabetes, and 10-15 percent of people with type 2), or to discover new drugs that could help preserve or regenerate beta cells. A typical person has about a billion beta cells, though only about a sixth of those, or 150 million, are needed to maintain insulin production. At any one time, Melton\u2019s lab has 6-10 \u201cspinner flasks\u201d whirling cells within a liquid medium\u2014each flask with enough beta cells for one patient.<\/p>\n

Using cells from cadavers, some patients already have benefitted from beta cell transplantation, which frees them from injecting insulin for five years or more by providing them with an infusion of cells that secrete their own insulin. But the supply of these cadaver cells is extremely limited. Just 40-50 people a year receive such transplants in the United States, according to Albert Hwa, PhD,\u00a0the director of discovery research at JDRF<\/a> (JDRF and the Helmsley Charitable Trust<\/a> are two of the organizations that have supported Melton\u2019s research).\u00a0 These recipients must all use strong immunosuppressive drugs so their bodies don\u2019t reject the foreign beta cells.<\/p>\n

Melton\u2019s beta-cell process could potentially make transplantation accessible to many more people with diabetes. Yet, for people with type 1 diabetes, the problem of the body\u2019s autoimmune attack on beta cells would still need to be solved. Melton is collaborating on that with Daniel Anderson, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT who is working on a process that protects and encapsulates beta cells with an algenate, or algae-like substance. Other scientists are testing out different methods of encapsulation, but progress has been slow. Melton points out that another benefit of an unlimited supply of beta cells is that it will become easier than it has been to test out and perfect encapsulation methods.<\/p>\n

A lot of work remains to be done before these cells would potentially be available to patients. Melton\u2019s lab still needs to make the protocol for creating the cells more efficient\u2014right now it takes 30-40 days. \u00a0They need to come up with a manufacturing plan that complies with FDA standards, and see which kinds of tests the regulatory agency requires. \u201cBut I think we\u2019ve shown that the problem can be solved; we\u2019re essentially at the finish line here in terms of how to make beta cells.\u201d He estimates that it will take at least three years until they reach the stage of clinical trials, where they can test out beta cells within an encapsulation device.<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s hard not to feel a sense of excitement about the potential of these cells. Last night, after giving Bisi insulin before her dinner, I told her about Melton\u2019s upcoming announcement, and then we looked at a video clip from his lab, showing magnified images of beta cells growing over the course of 48 hours. As one of the researchers described it: \u201cThe final image shows 6 flasks, enough for 6 patients, spinning away. \u00a0If you look closely, you can see particles spinning around, the white dust or dots are clusters of cells, each containing about 1000 cells.\u201d As we looked, mesmerized, at what we knew to be hundreds of millions of healthy beta cells spinning in a red liquid, we couldn\u2019t help but hope that a version of these cells would someday help Bisi, and others like her, escape from the day-to-day tyranny of type 1 diabetes.<\/p>\n

Katie Bacon<\/strong>\u00a0is a regular contributor to ASweetLife. She writes the blog\u00a0Eating with Bisi<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Using human embryonic stem cells as a base, the lab has pioneered a process that can reproduce human, insulin-producing beta cells on a large scale. As Melton said in a conference call with journalists, \u201cWhat we\u2019re reporting on is something that I think was obvious to many as a possible solution but just turned out to be difficult to achieve, and that is the creation of human beta cells that properly respond to sugar or glucose and secrete the right amount of insulin.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":36832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1446,1445],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn the Road to a Type 1 Diabetes Cure: Melton Lab Creates Functioning Beta Cells<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Using human embryonic stem cells as a base, the lab has pioneered a process that can reproduce human, insulin-producing beta cells on a large scale\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=36830\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Katie Bacon\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=36830\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=36830\",\"name\":\"On the Road to a Type 1 Diabetes Cure: Melton Lab Creates Functioning Beta Cells\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=36830#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=36830#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/human-sc-beta-cells-Home.jpeg\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-10-09T17:14:08+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-01-11T09:41:54+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/d9db494b4a0cbf28744f6c4a9c73329e\"},\"description\":\"Using human embryonic stem cells as a base, the lab has pioneered a process that can reproduce human, insulin-producing beta cells on a large scale\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=36830#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=36830\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=36830#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/human-sc-beta-cells-Home.jpeg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/human-sc-beta-cells-Home.jpeg\",\"width\":600,\"height\":402,\"caption\":\"Human stem cell derived beta cells\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=36830#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"On the Road to a Type 1 Diabetes Cure: Melton Lab Creates Functioning Beta Cells\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/\",\"name\":\"ASweetLife\",\"description\":\"The Diabetes Magazine\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/d9db494b4a0cbf28744f6c4a9c73329e\",\"name\":\"Katie Bacon\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8cc124bd5d3d2d03be80239ba09df7cc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8cc124bd5d3d2d03be80239ba09df7cc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Katie Bacon\"},\"description\":\"Katie Bacon is a writer and editor based in Boston. 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