Treating Diabetes with Transplanted Cells

Seventy-five years ago the type of diabetes that affected children and young adults was lethal. In the 1990's investigators found that a hormone, that was produced in Islets of Langerhans, was not being produced in diabetes patients. This hormone, called insulin, enables other cells to take up sugar glucose from the blood for energy. Diabetes patients who were not making insulin had glucose from food accumulating in the blood while other tissues were starving. Their are two types of diabetes. Type 1 diabetes has ceased completely from making insulin and the people who had this kind usu…