Reengineering Life

Scientists Are Trying to Reverse Diabetes With Gene Editing

A new technique involving CRISPR could eliminate the need for insulin shots

Emily Mullin
OneZero
Published in
5 min readMay 5, 2020

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Photo illustration. Image: Jonathan Knowles/Getty Images

Reengineering Life is a series from OneZero about the astonishing ways genetic technology is changing humanity and the world around us.

In the 1990s, a handful of people with Type 1 diabetes underwent an experimental therapy in hopes of curing their disease. They received transplants of tissue containing insulin-producing cells from people who had recently died. The hope was that the cells in the donor tissue would make up for the recipients’ faulty ones.

These insulin-producing cells, known as beta cells, are damaged or depleted in the more than 34 million people in the United States — about 10% of the population — who have diabetes. Beta cells normally produce and release insulin, a hormone that regulates blood sugar. But without these cells, people with diabetes need to take insulin regularly.

The transplants worked — temporarily, at least. Some patients no longer needed regular injections of insulin, but the effects wore off after a few months or years. The recipients also needed to take harsh immunosuppressant drugs so their bodies wouldn’t reject the transplanted tissue.

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Emily Mullin
OneZero

Former staff writer at Medium, where I covered biotech, genetics, and Covid-19 for OneZero, Future Human, Elemental, and the Coronavirus Blog.