{"id":235276,"date":"2026-04-15T18:08:04","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T23:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/implantable-islet-cells-could-control-diabetes-without-insulin-injections"},"modified":"2026-04-15T18:08:04","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T23:08:04","slug":"implantable-islet-cells-could-control-diabetes-without-insulin-injections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/implantable-islet-cells-could-control-diabetes-without-insulin-injections","title":{"rendered":"Implantable islet cells could control diabetes without insulin injections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/implantable-islet-cells-could-control-diabetes-without-insulin-injections.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Most diabetes patients must carefully monitor their blood sugar levels and inject insulin multiple times per day, to help keep their blood sugar from getting too high. As a possible alternative to those injections, MIT researchers are developing an implantable device that contains insulin-producing cells. The device encapsulates the cells, protecting them from immune rejection, and it also carries an onboard oxygen generator to keep the cells healthy.<\/p>\n<p>This device, the researchers hope, could offer a way to achieve long-term control of type 1 diabetes. In a new study, they showed that these encapsulated pancreatic islet cells could survive in the body for at least 90 days. In mice that received the implants, the cells remained functional and produced enough insulin to control the animals\u2019 blood sugar levels.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIslet cell therapy can be a transformative treatment for patients. However, current methods also require immune suppression, which for some people can be really debilitating,\u201d says Daniel Anderson, a professor in MIT\u2019s Department of Chemical Engineering and a member of MIT\u2019s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. \u201cOur goal is to find a way to give patients the benefit of cell therapy without the need for immune suppression.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most diabetes patients must carefully monitor their blood sugar levels and inject insulin multiple times per day, to help keep their blood sugar from getting too high. As a possible alternative to those injections, MIT researchers are developing an implantable device that contains insulin-producing cells. The device encapsulates the cells, protecting them from immune rejection, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-engineering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}