Stem cell therapy for Diabetes: Type I vs Type II

Stem cell therapy for Diabetes: Type I vs Type II

Albert Hwa, Operations Director at the Joslin’s Center for Cell-Based Therapy for Diabetes (CCTD) and Lecturer the Harvard Medical School, explains the rationale behind cell therapies for diabetes, and the specific issues related to the Type I and Type II forms.

In Type I Diabetes, most of the beta cells have been destroyed so there’s just not enough of the cells that are producing insulin.

And so again, for me, trained as an engineer, you think of a really simple way to solve that problem is that you’ve lost cells. Let’s just give you back some more of the cells.

That’s really the simplicity of this kind of approach. Theoretically you can also do it for Type II Diabetes and other types of diabetes but then obviously in Type II, you have some additional issues like obesity and insulin resistance. So I think the hurdle is a little higher because you probably need to put in many many more cells.

But then in Type I Diabetes, you also have to worry about autoimmunity in addition to rejection issues. So, there are many facets to this problem.