[mikequinlan]

Yes, cured but…

>But patients in the trial had to stay on drugs to prevent the immune system from destroying the new cells. Suppressing the immune system, he said, increases the risk of infections and, over the long term, can increase the risk of cancer.

>“The argument is this immunosuppression is not as dangerous as what we typically use for kidneys, hearts and lungs, but we won’t know that definitely for many years,” Dr. Hirsch said.

>Patients may have to take the immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of their lives, the Vertex spokeswoman said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/health/diabetes-cure-insu...

[ink_13]

I'm not diabetic, but the trading "existing Type-1 management" for "lifelong immunosuppression" seems bananas. Usually the alternative to immunosuppression is "dying", not "manually and/or pump administered insulin".

[nmehner]

As written above: This might be different for people with dementia or other issues that are not in a mental state to manage their diabetes.

From what I understand from the study the aim is to show that mass producing islet cells from stem cells is possible. Previously those where extracted from pancreases from dead people.

Having cells extracted from your own body has the advantage that there are a lot of they are not rejected by the immune system.

The reason the immune suppression is still needed is the cause of type 1 diabetes: It is a auto immune disease where the body attacks its own islet cells.

But this a specific immune reaction which could be easier to prevent than the generic rejection of cells from a different body. But this is not what this approach is trying to do for now.

This study just wants to show: This approach of creating islet cells work and it is worth trying to do a bigger more expensive study that can produce statistically relevant results.

"Curing" type 1 diabetis is still years off and that requires the immune issue to be solved as well.

[jmye]

> This study just wants to show: This approach of creating islet cells work and it is worth trying to do a bigger more expensive study that can produce statistically relevant results.

It is incredible to me what a hard time people are having understanding this extremely obvious fact.

Knowing this is a possible path to a cure, even if it’s currently undesirable for the majority of patients, is an important step.

[etaioinshrdlu]

And one of the patients in the study died of meningitis...

[gsf_emergency_2]

>allogeneic

The hope is that patient-derived cells will eventually be possible (whether the margins are attractive or not)