Interesting news story on stem cell transplants for Type 1 diabetes

Note:
I am not medically trained and it is 13 years since I worked in this area. 
Single words below in bold italics are explained in the Jargon Buster at the end.

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The news story
London [as in Ontario, Canada] woman off insulin for Type 1 diabetes after a single dose of experimental manufactured stem cells (21 June 2025) CTV News
- read to the end for a cracking typo / correction :D

It's really exciting news and hopefully can be expanded to more people with Type 1 diabetes but, as is almost always the case, it's not a simple fix.

When I worked at Diabetes UK a question that came up frequently at any research talk I gave, or through our question and answering service, was along the lines of "Can't people with Type 1 diabetes just have their beta cells replaced with stem cells?"

Yes.... but...

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition
A person with Type 1 diabetes has an autoimmune condition in which their immune system selectively goes after and destroys the insulin-producing beta cells in the islets of their pancreas. Destruction is a gradual process but at some point there won't be enough beta cells to produce enough insulin (an essential hormone) and the person will start to show unavoidable symptoms of Type 1 diabetes, requiring daily insulin injections or use of an insulin pump. 

Their immune system has attacked their own insulin-producing cells. 

Using your own stem cells, or other cells, as a source of potential replacement cells
If a person with Type 1 had stem cells taken from their own body, the cells tweaked in some way to convert them to insulin-producing beta cells and then returned to the person's body I think there's a high chance that the immune system would attack these genetically-identical-to-the-last-lot-of-beta-cells in the exact same way. Possibly the cells would survive for a period of time before the autoimmune system got round to munching through all of them, but I'm fairly certain it would happen. 

Using cells from elsewhere
If you were to take or make beta cells, derived from stem cells or another source, from any other person you'd also have the problem of tissue rejection or organ rejection that happens whenever your immune system meets something 'foreign' (after all that is what it has evolved to do). 

For the autoimmune side of things I don't know if it's because the immune system has some objection to (or at least is triggered by) -

(a) beta cells in particular - perhaps there is some marker on the surface of the cell, e.g. a glycoprotein in the cell membrane to which the immune system 'takes offence' and so will attack any beta cell. An analogy to this might be a computer virus that attacks any PDF file.
or
(b) any cell that secretes insulin (so perhaps tweaking other types of cells to be able to produce insulin wouldn't solve the problem). An analogy to this might be a computer virus that attacks any file that has the word 'insulin' in it, whether it's in a doc, spreadsheet, PDF or reminder note to collect a prescription.

The need to suppress the immune system
The 'solution', such as it is, when giving anyone a donor organ (pancreas) or cell transplant (islets) is to accompany that with immune suppressing medication that stops the immune system from attacking the newly transplanted tissue. That's good but having your immune system suppressed is not an easy way to go through life (for example think back to the groups of people needing the most protection from Covid).

The news story about a stem cell trial
The news article above reports on an encouraging development in using an external ('allogeneic') source of stem cell-derived insulin-producing cells* to help people with Type 1 diabetes in Canada (Canadian scientists have been doing amazing work in Type 1 diabetes and transplantation research), where their diabetes was difficult to manage. This was a small trial with 14 patients.

The woman interviewed has been able to come off insulin for now (I don't know if that will be permanent) but she does have to take immune suppressing medicine for life (or for the length of time that the transplanted cells survive). The article also notes the death of two of the trial participants, one was possibly linked to immune suppression but the person died from infection following an unrelated surgery. The other death seems entirely unrelated to the trial as they died from dementia.

*the stem cells were used to make more than just the insulin-producing beta cells, so the end result was slightly more similar to the grouping of cells (islets) found naturally in the pancreas.

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Further reading
The news article (also linked above): London [as in Ontario, Canada] woman off insulin for Type 1 diabetes after a single dose of experimental manufactured stem cells (21 June 2025) CTV News

which is about the study reported here: Stem Cell–Derived, Fully Differentiated Islets for Type 1 Diabetes (20 June 2025) New England Journal of Medicine, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2506549

and this paper has also been reviewed here: Can Stem Cells Cure Type 1 Diabetes? (10 July 2025) NEJM Journal Watch
"Phase 2 trial results look promising... Although the treatment potentially obviates some issues with pancreatic transplants (e.g., organ availability and surgical complexity), it still requires immunosuppression."

See also the section headed "Promising results from beta cell therapy trials in type 1 diabetes" in Diabetes UK's research news roundup for 3 July 2025.

Jargon buster
allogeneic / allotransplantation: 'allo' here means 'other' and refers to cells or organs being transplanted from someone else. Allogeneic just means 'contains material from someone that isn't you'.

glycoprotein - a molecule that contains a sugar element and a protein element. All sorts of molecules are found inside, within and outside the cell membrane. Some are used as a sort of 'flag' to say 'this is the type of cell I am'.

islets - 'islets of Langerhans' - groups of hormone-secreting cells scattered within the pancreas. Islets include beta cells which release insulin, and alpha cells that release another hormone glucagon. Both help to control the level of glucose in the blood.

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Anyway let's all enjoy the news site's correction - "The Edmonton Protocol involves cells from deceased organ donors, not diseased organ donors."

What a phrase - "The most valued image on Wikipedia Commons within the scope: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches"

For a work thing* I needed an image of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and looked to Wikimedia Commons to see if someone had made one available under a Creative Commons licence. Yes! 

A peanut butter and jelly sandwich, made with Skippy peanut butter and Welch's grape jelly on white bread, by Evan Amos, published under a CC0 licence on Wikimedia Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peanut-Butter-Jelly-Sandwich.jpg

Scrolling down the page on which the photo is stored (to find the citation information I needed to credit the photographer) I came across this fantastic sentence - 

"This image has been assessed under the valued image criteria and is considered the most valued image on Commons within the scope: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You can see its nomination here."

I think the image actually only got 1 vote (the main one it was competing with got none but you can see the full range of PBJ images in the category here) so it's not necessarily a slam dunk, but the file is used on 'List of sandwiches' and, of course 'Peanut butter and jelly sandwich'. It's also used on other-language versions of Wikipedia including Erdnussbutter, Sándwich de mantequilla de cacahuete y jalea and Sendvič s arašidovým maslom a želé.

*There's a great video of a dad asking his two children to come up with very precise instructions to make a 'PBJ' sandwich. This and other variants are often used as a fun way to teach kids about computer algorithms and how steps must be followed precisely in the right order to get the result you want. Also that computers have to be told exactly what to do.

Job listings should display the salary or range - petition to UK parliament closes on 9 July 2025

Please sign this petition if you agree with it.

Legally require all job listings to show salaries upfront
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700482/

"Legally require all job listings to show salaries upfront - We ask the Government to make it a legal requirement that all job listings show salary ranges clearly and upfront. We believe this would create a fairer, more transparent job market, better inform candidates and reduce time-wasting when searching for jobs.

Sources state that 35% of UK job listings don’t list salaries, wasting time and widening wage gaps in various fields such as marketing (People Managing People, 2023). Countries such as the U.S. (in states like California) and the EU already require salary ranges in job postings (HR Dive, 2023; Council of the EU, 2023). We believe that a UK law would ensure fairer pay practices, reduce disparities, and help candidates make informed choices, building a more efficient and transparent job market."

I've just found out about this petition six days before it closes which is a shame as I'd have wanged on about it constantly if I'd heard of it sooner! In the UK many job adverts helpfully include the level of the salary, this is usually a range (expressed as £31,645-36,245 sort of thing). This is clear and helpful. Too many jobs still say 'competitive' though which is fairly uninformative. 

I don't believe that any jobseeker is helped by not having the salary information. 

I run a large-ish (4.6k subscribers) mailing list and in ~2018 I decided to stop posting any job advert to the list that didn't have a clear numeric salary. While that means some jobs can't go to the list (it's a shame, and I'm not particularly happy about that) what often happens is that when I email the poster to explain they can go back to their boss / HR people and pass the message on... resulting in a numeric salary added to the email. Hooray. 

Legally require all job listings to show salaries upfront
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700482/ 

 

Further reading
1. The Real Reason Job Ads Don't Include A Salary Range (19 March 2017) Forbes, by Liz Ryan.

2. "Theatres please please understand that advertising a job without a salary automatically makes working class artists think they can’t apply. @ace_national please have a word with your NPOs about transparency" (21 May 2018 - tweet is no longer extant so I've not included the reference as it looks like the author has shuttered their account).

3. "There is no good reason to post a job ad without a salary range. There are only bad reasons: 1. To keep current employees from learning they’re underpaid 2. To keep candidates unaware of the budgeted range 3. To use candidates’ salary histories as free market research" (27 July 2019) @humanworkplace (the author of the Forbes piece above).

4. Perspective: The EU Pay Transparency Directive (9 Jan 2025) Deloitte - this doesn't affect the UK

5. Pay transparency in the EU
 - "New rules on pay transparency should help tackle pay discrimination at work and contribute to closing the gender pay gap." - this doesn't affect the UK

 

 

Much missed - Supper Talks at the Chelsea Physic Garden with the Tangerine Dream Café

I often go to public talks, about all sorts of topics. One series that was a regular in my 'season' was the Supper Talks at the Chelsea Physic Garden (CPG), sadly no more. 

Here's a photo of the room the talks took place in upstairs (not my photo so haven't embedded it).

https://x.com/ChelsPhysicGdn/status/738431887576829952/photo/1 and you can find more tweets and images here.

Everything about this was utterly lovely and genteel - you got to hear someone talk about something interesting and eat something delicious. You could choose to have your supper before or after the talk (I always took the earlier sitting so that I could take the Thames Clipper ferry home to Greenwich afterwards; it runs from Cadogan Pier but there aren't many ferries after 9pm). Talk, nice food, ferry - just perfection in my book.

CPG is economic botany / ethnobotany heaven. It is a beautiful and interesting garden with areas for different kinds of plants that are used for different purposes (dyeing, food, medicine, clothing) with lovely little greenhouses and all sorts of interesting features. The shop is also wonderful and I had several happy snacks and suppers in the Tangerine Dream Café.

 

That café has now moved to the Ragged School in Poplar (the Ragged Café is on the 309 bus route, or a short walk from the 339) but the Supper Talks at CPG seem to have stopped. The current café arrangement does run what look to be lovely supper events. Outside tables laden with deliciousness, but it's just eating not learning so I've never felt that tempted. I realised I'd not actually been to the gardens since 2018 (!) so I will have to remedy that soon, I suppose Covid didn't help.

In December 2018 lots of celebrities wrote to (then) Prince Charles asking him to save the Tangerine Dream Café which lost out to Rocket And Radish Ltd, there was a bit of a hoo ha about it and it made the Daily Mail: Stars plea to Charles to fight to save garden cafe under threat of closure.

Annoyingly, for the purposes of this post, I don't have a record of all the talks I attended but have managed to find some info about a few of them.

This page shows the current events at Chelsea Physic Garden.

4 October 2018
Supper talk: 'Captain Bligh & the Breadfruit'
"William Bligh (of ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ fame) undertook two remarkable Pacific voyages before 1800, transporting Breadfruit from Tahiti to the West Indies. A fascinating evening presented by Pieter Ban der Merwe, outlining the challenges and outcomes of these missions." 

I wasn't able to find the info on the Wayback Machine / Internet Archive but this snippet came via the Cadogan VIP magazine PDF.

They had some breadfruit at this talk and I rather enjoyed it - a bit like a very light pineapple.

4 October 2018 - sampling breadfruit at the Chelsea Physic Garden supper talk on Captain Bligh and the Breadfruit. Both of which I enjoyed.

 

4 October 2018 - possibly a very similar meal to the one below (I can see edamame beans in there) but I didn't make a note of the menu options.

Before I had supper and attended the talk I took a wander round the gift shop.

4 October 2018 - 1 of 3 - the shop at Chelsea Physic Garden

4 October 2018 - 2 of 3 - the shop at Chelsea Physic Garden

4 October 2018 - 3 of 3 - inside the Tangerine Dream Cafe at Chelsea Physic Garden with some lovely bunting

7 December 2017
‘Fashioned from Nature’ with Edwina Ehrman, Curator of Textiles and Fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum - all about clothing from natural fibres.

From my contemporaneous tweets - 

• "The best bleaching was in Haarlem" Nthlnds - rich folk would send linens there for a spruce up! (also area unpolluted)" 
• "Uncreasable and dye-absorbing linen seems to be the holy grail for textile mfrs. Now hearing about mythic linen-tweed mix" (mythic because original samples hard to get hold of) 
• "Drapers used to *explain* fabrics to their customers, highlighting things to look out for when buying. Harder w synthetics!" 
• "Cotton is v *environmentally* "hygroscopic". 6tn litres used in dying industry. Low-water finishing denim is an improvement" (may be an improvement!) 
• "+, cotton from US, shipped to Colombia for weaving, then to New York for printing. Zipping abt the globe in container ships" 
• "Learning about pineapple fibres which are used in a bonded not woven fabric (I might need to google that)" 
• "Also apparently people in the Balkans have been making alternative leather from mushrooms for *ages*(!)".
  

7 December 2017 - The tables in the garden were covered with the largest wreaths I've ever seen.

13 July 2017
Supper talk: ‘More than cotton: textile secrets of Kew’s Economic Botany Collection’ with Dr Mark Nesbitt, Curator, Economic Botany Collection Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Below is a photo I took of the supper I had on the night.

13 July 2017 - Goat’s cheese, gruyere and sun-dried tomato tarte (recipe link, Daily Mail link), edamame beans & green & yellow courgettes, plus feta, olive and watermelon, plus orange polenta cake & a glass of white.

4 August 2016
Scented Decadence with Dr. Christina Bradstreet
"Why did the scent of roses encapsulate the spirit of decadence in late nineteenth-century art? This talk explores the use and abuse of perfume and its pleasures and pains in scenes of fragrant intoxication."

You can see all the Chelsea Physic Garden Supper Talks for the 2016 summer and winter season here.

[NEW] She is also presenting "Watts' Choosing: talk and tour with Curator, Dr Christina Bradstreet" at the Watts Gallery (GU3 1DQ) near Guildford on Friday 11 July 2025 from 5.30 to 7pm.

11 Aug 2010
Chelsea Physic Garden talk: 'Hans Sloane, Quinine (Cinchona) & Malaria' by Prof Monique Simmonds. Technically not a 'supper talk' but the restaurant was open and there was a price given for the combined talk and food.

Sloane, Quinine and the Battle Against Malaria
"Chelsea Physic Garden has been growing cinchona (the source of quinine) since Sloane’s time. Professor Monique Simmonds who works at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, is an expert on ethnobotany and on the plants which have been used to combat this life-threatening disease."

2007 photo of large wooden box labelled Cinchona succirubra at University of Leiden (I was there doing a two-week course in Economic Botany - fab).

Other posts in the Much Missed series

• Somerset House and Film4's Summer Screen series of open air films in the courtyard (9 June 2022)
• The Bankside Frost Fair 2003 - 2008 (24 November 2020)
• Speechification, curated radio documentaries (9 January 2020)
• The National Geographic shop on Regent Street, London (4 January 2020)
• MOMI, London's Museum of the Moving Image (2 January 2014)

 

Tangerine Dream Café - as far as I can tell this began at the Chelsea Physic Garden in 2005 before moving to Brook Green in 2018, then became Café Tangerine at the Institut Francais in 2019 before moving to the Ragged School in Poplar (in 2023..?) and becoming the Ragged Café. 

Here's the Tangerine Dream café recipe for Goat’s cheese, gruyere and sun-dried tomato tarte (all Daily Mail links) also for Crunchy lemon cake  and Fig, thyme, almond and honey tart.

Reach for the Sky Challenge Fund - CAA / DfT funding now open to encourage young people into aviation careers

I have literally (not figuratively) been clicking the first link every day for months as I'm going to apply for this funding. My project, if funded, will be an issue of the CS4FN magazine (plus a new aviation portal on the CS4FN blog about flying and careers) about the computer science and human-computer interaction involved in designing, flying and tracking of aircraft and development of lower carbon options. Very excited, wish me luck!

Here's what I've posted to psci-com, the mailing list for science communicators.

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The Civil Aviation Authority and Department for Transport are keen to encourage young people to find out about careers in aviation so this fund is less about public engagement with the science of flight and more about careers outreach (but the previously funded projects obviously do include plenty of flight-related scicomm!).

Reach For The Sky Challenge Fund
https://stem.caa.co.uk/reach-for-the-sky-challenge-fund/
• open today until 12 September 2025
• Total pot is £750k, likely spread among 10+ projects

They are looking for outstanding outreach projects that can meet the following three objectives:

1. Inspire the next generation of aviation professionals, championing the opportunities available in the sector.  Applicants’ activities should focus on developing interest and engagement with the opportunities available in aviation, showing clear links to career pathways. This might also involve supporting someone in developing skills or gaining experience that could be useful for a career in aviation or aerospace, but should not replace formal education, i.e., delivery of statutory licences or educational qualifications.

2. Reach individuals who would not otherwise be aware of opportunities available within the aviation sector. Applicants should consider how their project might benefit under-represented groups (i.e. women and girls, people from minority ethnic backgrounds, people with disabilities or those from lower socio-economic backgrounds).

3. Have a broad impact by reaching and engaging multiple people. This might be achieved through some form of mass participation event, delivery through an education setting or youth group, or via virtual methods that can reach a mass audience.

Other useful links
Today's press release:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/750000-to-break-down-barriers-and-get-more-young-people-into-aviation-jobs

Reach for the Sky evaluation (26 September 2024, updated 17 Feb 2025)
Evaluating the success of the Reach for the Sky Challenge Fund and its ability to get young people into aviation careers.

Last year's press release (they upped the pot with additional funding, to £810k, and funded 16 projects (actually 18 if you click on the 'successful applicants button on the first page linked).

PDF listing the 2024 successful applicants with a summary of their projects.

The CAA's (quite fun, cute cartoons page on Careers in Aviation and Aerospace which includes everything (engineering, programming, logistics, ground crew, pilots and cabin crew).

Generation Aviation Group (Gov.UK)
"Generation Aviation is a multistream programme that helps build an aviation workforce fit for the future by raising the profile of aviation careers, removing barriers to access and attracting diverse and talented people to tackle new technologies, decarbonisation and other emerging trends."

Flight tracking pages
FlightRadar24 | ADS-B Exchange | Flight Aware (enter an airport name to see what's coming and going)