Type 1 diabetes, which usually manifests during childhood, is caused by the destruction of ß-cells, a type of cell that normally resides in the pancreas and produces a hormone called insulin. Without insulin, the body's organs have difficulty absorbing sugars, such as glucose, from the blood. Once a death sentence, the disease can now be managed with regular glucose monitoring and insulin injections. A more permanent solution, however, would be to replace the missing ß-cells. But these cells are hard to come by, so researchers have looked towards stem cell technology as a way to make them.

"The power of regenerative medicine is that it can potentially provide an unlimited source of functional, insulin-producing ß-cells that can then be transplanted into the patient," said Dr. Ding, who is also a professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), with which Gladstone is affiliated. "But previous attempts to produce large quantities of healthy ß-cells -- and to develop a workable delivery system -- have not been entirely successful. So we took a somewhat different approach."