It was learned from Peking University that our team of scientists used chemical reprogramming to induce pluripotent stem cells (hereinafter referred to as "CiPS cells") to prepare islet cells to treat type 1 diabetes. In clinical trials, the first patient to receive transplantation restored endogenous autonomy and physiological blood glucose regulation. After 75 days of transplantation, the patient completely and stably withdrew from insulin injection therapy, and the current therapeutic effect has been stable for more than 1 year, achieving clinical functional cure. The achievement was published on the evening of the 25th in the internationally authoritative journal Cell. The research team consists of Shen Zhongyang and Wang Shusen from Tianjin First Central Hospital, as well as Deng Hongkui from Peking University and Changping Laboratory. "This study is of great significance for the treatment of diabetes." Deng Hongkui introduced that diabetes is one of the major diseases threatening human health worldwide. The commonly used treatment methods, such as insulin injection and hypoglycemic drugs, are difficult to achieve precise regulation of blood sugar, leading to various complications that seriously affect the quality of life of patients and even endanger their lives. After more than 40 years of clinical accumulation, islet transplantation has achieved good clinical efficacy in the treatment of diabetes, but the shortage of human pancreas donors has seriously limited its wide application. Pancreatic islet cells prepared from pluripotent stem cells provide a new source for transplantation treatment of diabetes. The reporter learned that pluripotent stem cells have the characteristics of unlimited proliferation and the ability to differentiate into all functional cell types of organisms. They have broad and important application value in cell therapy, drug screening, and other fields, and are the most promising "seed cells" in the field of regenerative medicine. After more than 20 years of systematic research, the research team, taking diabetes treatment as the breakthrough point, based on the key core technology of chemical reprogramming, has established a scheme for the efficient differentiation of human CiPS cells into mature islets, and has proved the feasibility, safety and effectiveness of the differentiated islets in treating diabetes in primate diabetes experimental animal models. In June 2023, the research team was officially approved for the national stem cell clinical research record, and carried out an exploratory clinical study on the treatment of type 1 diabetes with islet cell transplantation derived from human CiPS cells. The first patient included in the study was a type 1 diabetes patient with a medical history of 11 years. The blood sugar could not be effectively controlled through intensive insulin treatment. After receiving autologous CiPS cell differentiated pancreatic islet transplantation treatment, the patient's fasting blood glucose level gradually returned to normal, and the need for exogenous insulin continued to decrease. From the 75th day after transplantation, the patient can completely and stably withdraw from insulin injection treatment. After 5 months of transplantation, the patient's blood glucose compliance rate has continuously increased from the baseline value of 43.18% to over 98% and maintained at this level, indicating stable blood glucose control. Another important index, glycosylated hemoglobin, dropped to 4.76% one year after transplantation, indicating that the systemic blood sugar level was in a long-term non diabetes state, reaching the level of normal people. As of the publication of the paper, the patient had completely withdrawn from insulin therapy for over a year, with clinical data reaching the one-year efficacy and safety endpoints and no signs of transplant related abnormalities. It is worth mentioning that this study also achieved effective monitoring of transplants through ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging for the first time in clinical practice, greatly improving the safety of stem cell clinical treatment research. "These results preliminarily prove that the islet cell therapy prepared by chemical reprogramming pluripotent stem cells is safe and effective, and has achieved the clinical functional cure of type 1 diabetes." Deng Hongkui stated that the successful clinical trials of functional cells prepared by chemical reprogramming technology indicate that chemical reprogramming has the potential to become a universal underlying technology for efficiently preparing various types of functional cells, opening up new avenues for the widespread application of cell therapy. (New Society)