In the past year researchers have brought within reach a logn-sought therapy for diabetes: an artificial pancreas. Such a device would secrete insulin in precise relation to the level of glucose in the blood, improving the management of the disease and the comfort of the patient.
The first encouraging results were published last summer by investigators at BioHybrid Technologies in Massachusetts, who announced that they had weaned diabetic dogs from insulin injections for several months by implanting islets of Langerhans, warding off rejection with a semipermeable membrane.
After this, four technologies for an artificial pancreas come into consideration:
1. A robot pancreas could be made by coupling an insulin pump with a good blood clucose sensor.
2. A whole pancreas could be transplanted.
3. A cell line derived from the liver or muscle might be bioengineered to secrete insulin in response to changes in blood glucose.
4. One could transplant the islets alone, perhaps far from their normal domicile in the pancreas.
[Scientific Am., June 1993, 7-9.]
As said before, in the experiments the islets were hidden from the immune system by membranes. The main obstacle is still fibrosis.
Vascular damage, blindness, kidney failure and stroke are complications that make diabetes the third-largest cause of death in the USA, after heart disease and cancer.