Very few people have ever heard about the concept of artificial skin transplants. That will change in the near future, though. Artificial skin transplants may be the one thing we need to treat type 2 diabetes. The skin grafts based on CRISPR gene editing can yield some very powerful results. Their first tests involving mice are positive, but ensuring the technology works for humans in the same way is something else entirely. Diabetes Can be Treated With Artificial Skin Transplants A lot of people may not like the sound of artificial skin transplants. It sounds a lot scarier than it really is. However,
Very few people have ever heard about the concept of artificial skin transplants. That will change in the near future, though. Artificial skin transplants may be the one thing we need to treat type 2 diabetes. The skin grafts based on CRISPR gene editing can yield some very powerful results. Their first tests involving mice are positive, but ensuring the technology works for humans in the same way is something else entirely.
Diabetes Can be Treated With Artificial Skin Transplants
A lot of people may not like the sound of artificial skin transplants. It sounds a lot scarier than it really is. However, there is nothing to fear about them. In fact, we have been using artificial skin implants for several decades now, although they were never deployed as a way to treat diabetes up until now. Burn patients often recover thanks to these implants. Artificial skin implants have proven to be an invaluable tool in the world of healthcare so far and it seems their number of use cases may be expanded upon.
Scientists have successfully used these implants to treat diabetes in mice. That is a major development in medicine. The researchers edited stem cells from newborn mice to control the release of the hormone stimulating insulin production. Once the cells were turned into skin grafts, they were given to mice suffering from diabetes.
The mice were not born with diabetes. Instead, researchers fed them high-fat diets to create obesity. A bit of a cruel method, but it is not uncommon to see this sort of thing in the medical sector. Obesity is still one of the main risk factors to cause type 2 diabetes. Especially people with a high insulin resistance develop this condition. This type of development was induced in these mice through some modifications to create viable test criteria.
Once the mice received the artificial skin implants, their insulin resistance levels started to reverse. Additionally, they gained around half the weight as those not given the grafts. This suggests that one can treat diabetes with these implants, although it will not do much for anyone suffering from type 1 diabetes. The people who do suffer from that condition may soon have access to a cheap and efficient solution created from stem cells. The goal is to turn these stem cells into human skin over time.
There may be other clinical developments involving artificial skin implants we have yet to discover. Ever since doctors started treating burn patients with this technique, the quest to find other use cases has been in full effect. Given the recent breakthroughs in this field, one can grow artificial skin in a lab. However, given the lack of human test subjects, finding other use cases has been pretty difficult. This is where the mice come into the picture, even though the results involving human subjects may differ greatly.
This is not a cure for diabetes, but it is an approach to help people maintain their glucose levels. For now, it only works if you have type 2 diabetes caused by obesity, but it is still an important breakthrough regardless. The bigger question is what other types of diseases may be treated through artificial skin implants.