Diabetes: Synthetic beta cells could lead to skin patch treatment
A team of scientists has created synthetic pancreatic beta cells that automatically release insulin when they sense high blood sugar. In the journal Nature Chemical Biology , researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University in Raleigh describe how they developed and tested the synthetic cells. Senior author Zhen Gu, a professor in biomedical engineering at both universities, and team hope that one day, the cells could be used in a noninvasive skin patch to treat diabetes. They found that just one injection of the synthetic beta cells kept blood sugar in diabetic mice at normal levels for 5 days. Diabetes is a disease that develops when the body has problems with using or producing insulin, a hormone that helps cells to take in and convert blood sugar, or glucose, into energy. The body produces insulin in the pancreas, which is a glandular organ behind the stomach that houses the beta cells that make and release t