Just saw this recently. Hopefully devices like these can offer a practical cure sooner than later. Immunosuppressive drugs are a deal-breaker for me though.
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Ultimately, this ends up being worse than diabetes. It’s kind of the catch-phrase I search for in all of these “cure” write-ups. I read that sentence and move-on.
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Agreed re: immunosuppressant tx making a “cure” not worth it. Maybe eventually they can make them easily and cheaply enough (and easily enough to insert) that you could just add new ones as your immune system destroys them… I’ve wondered before if that might be the future of T1, where rather than daily insulin, we take regular infusions of stem cell-derived islet cells, to be killed and replaced. Guess it depends on how quickly all the islet cell killing happens, but you’d think given how long honeymoon periods last, it might take a while.
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I am looking for research on this every few weeks. It puzzles me that this does not seem to be on the research radar.
You might look at some of the work they’re doing in Australia; there was a science journal report I saw there on doing the. implants in liver tissue and they appear to thrive. But they’re doing these really early and were doing grafts from existing islets in the same individual. Can’t find the info now, some of the journals I’ve followed in the US here for years are just inaccessible now, dead pages.