Reprogrammed fat cells have held one type 1 diabetes patient off insulin for nearly three years

This is a result in one patient. The Nature feature follows this woman's blood sugar through nearly three years, in a trial described in a 2024 study co-authored by the immunologist who led the work ^[8], and the account of that trial covers her alone ^[23]. Insulin independence in one person shows that the route can work in a human being, and establishing how often it works will take a cohort.

The islets were made from the patient's own fat cells, reprogrammed to an embryonic-like state and then pushed forward into hormone-producing clusters ^[5][6]. The graft is genetically hers, so there is no donor to match ^[22]. Protecting new beta cells from the immune attack that destroyed the originals is a separate problem, and for decades the available tools were broad immunosuppression or replacing what the body cannot make on its own ^[19].

She was also an unusual first case. By 25 she had undergone two liver transplants and a pancreas transplant in an effort to treat her diabetes, and she had been through three life-threatening periods of severe hypoglycaemia despite intensive insulin therapy ^[1][2]. Her diabetes began at about age 15 ^[20]. "This has had a huge positive impact on her quality of life and overall physical, mental and emotional wellbeing," said Hongkui Deng, who leads the Peking University team ^[9].

Demand is rising slowly and steadily. Worldwide prevalence of type 1 diabetes has nearly doubled in the past 40 years ^[13]. Compounded, that is about 1.75% a year, since the fortieth root of two is 1.0175 ^[21].

Two researchers quoted in the same article put the clinic at different distances. "Ten years ago, this was science fiction," said Holger Russ, a stem-cell biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, who added, "Now it's actually happening as we speak" ^[16][17]. Frederick Miller, an emeritus immunologist and rheumatologist at the US National Institutes of Health, put more work in front of it. "All of these approaches are promising, but there needs to be a lot of tedious, meticulous therapeutic trials done on each disease," Miller said ^[15]. More than 100 autoimmune diseases are known, and almost none of them has a cure ^[10][11].