User:Cap'n Refsmmat/ScienceNews/April 10, 2005

New hope for diabetics
A new medical treatment means that diabetics may not have to live with insulin shots all of their lives. Instead, their blood cells can be "reconfigured" to create insulin.

Scietists had earlier managed to create insulin-producing cells from human embryonic stem cells. While this works well, there is no way to obtain these cells from each patient specifically, so patients would be forced to stay on anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives while their immune system tries to attack the foreign cells.

So several scientists from the University of Kiel in Germany tried a new approach. They exposed human white blood cells to the same chemicals they used to make the embryonic stem cells create insulin. And it worked! The white blood cells now created insulin, and when injected into diabetic mice, it lowered the mice's blood sugar level to normal.

Because the white blood cells can be obtained from the patient themself, they should not be rejected by the immune system, meaning one shot could last many years without needing constant blood sugar testing and insulin injections.

This is one discovery that has the potential to change many people's lives.