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