A Canadian nurse has kicked insulin to the curb after just one dose of an experimental stem cell therapy, with experts calling it a milestone in the fight against Type 1 diabetes.
Amanda Smith, 36, had been battling the chronic autoimmune disease for a decade.
Whereas Type 2 diabetes is more common in later adulthood and linked to lifestyle factors, Type 1 typically starts in childhood. The exact causes are unknown.
Treating it involves an exhausting interplay of insulin injections, carbohydrate counting and constant monitoring.
“You have to pay attention to your diabetes, or you die,” Smith told the Washington Post in 2024.
On Valentine’s Day 2023, she received a single injection of lab-grown insulin-producing islet cells in her liver.
By August, she no longer needed insulin.
“I just feel normal again,” Smith told the outlet.
“You didn’t realize how much of your life it took up — until it’s taking up none, now.”
Nearly two years later, she’s still free.
“I get emotional because I’m free from those handcuffs…I don’t have that looming over me every day,” she recently told CTV News.
Smith and 11 others participated in the experimental treatment, which experts are hailing as a groundbreaking success.
“I think the data is just so very exciting, so very, very powerful,” Dr. Peter Senior, director of the Alberta Diabetes Institute at the University of Alberta, who was not involved in the study, told the outlet.
“The primary objective of the study was just to show that the blood sugars were better and that people were not having severe hypoglycemia. They blew past that. Ten of the 12 people are off insulin.”
So, why isn’t everyone on this treatment?
Cells from donors, or even lab-made ones, often trigger immune attacks unless patients are on powerful suppressants, which carry risks like infections, cancer and organ damage.
The treatment would also require full Food and Drug Administration approval, which would involve costly clinical trials.
Larger, more long-term data is needed to prove safety and efficacy and, even then, the therapy would be expensive and tricky.
Still, the possibilities are enormous.
“I think we’ve got a treatment for diabetes where we are no longer constrained by organ donors,” said Senior.
“We’ve got potentially a limitless source of cells that could be used, and that is a massively huge step forward in terms of a cell therapy becoming a reality,” he added.
“I think people with diabetes deserve some of the transformative treatments we’ve seen in cancer and other diseases but we’ve been stuck essentially doing the same thing for 100 years.”
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