Hey diabetics! Imagine ditching the daily needle routine!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
In Type 1 diabetes, our body’s defenses accidentally wipe out our insulin-making cells. Doctors try swapping in donated cells, but those get smoked too! S-O-S! Save Our Cells!
Enter Per-Ola Carlsson’s team at Uppsala University. They used gene editing to camouflage donor cells by removing cell “name tags.” These mark our cells as self OR non‑self. Then they boosted a “don’t‑eat‑me” signal!
Their first patient – a diabetic for 37 years – received a low dose of stealth cells. For twelve weeks, the cells thrived! Just one patient so far, but research is ongoing to scale up.
Let’s keep our cells clocking in — and needles clocking out.
Reference: Carlsson, P. O., Hu, X., Scholz, H., Ingvast, S., Lundgren, T., Scholz, T., … & Schrepfer, S. (2025). Survival of Transplanted Allogeneic Beta Cells with No Immunosuppression. New England Journal of Medicine.