Regenerative medicine holds the extraordinary promise that future patients in need of new cells, tissues or organs will no longer have to rely on donors. Organ shortages and cell type mismatches will become past problems, replaced by safe, on-demand options for anyone who needs a transplant. This revolutionary field still faces many challenges, including the nontrivial task of convincing stem cells to differentiate into desired cell types for treatment.
And even if the correct cells or tissues are created and can function successfully in the body, immune rejection presents a formidable barrier to their use. To overcome this obstacle, regenerative medicine treatments in use today require systemic immunosuppression, leaving patients vulnerable to environmental hazards like viruses, bacteria and cancer cells. In a novel approach to tackle these obstacles, researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina and the University of Florida recently collaborated on a novel, highly specific strategy to treat type 1 diabetes (T1D) using a tagged beta cell transplant in tandem with localized immune protection provided by specialized immune cells also tagged with a complementary but inert targeting molecule.
According to Leonardo Ferreira, Ph.D., a researcher at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center and one of the principal investigators on the study, marrying stem cell engineering and regulatory T cell (Treg) engineering allowed the first step toward a readily available, off-the-shelf solutio.
