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There is now hope for millions of people living with Type 1 diabetes. One small, cell-based implant could provide their bodies with the insulin they so desperately need.
According to Israel.com, the implant essentially serves as a pancreas, the organ in the body that produces insulin for people whose pancreas cannot create their own. Since Type 1 diabetics cannot produce insulin, the implant can be lifechangers for them.
Types of Diabetics
There are two types of diabetes. In the first, Type 1 diabetes, people are born unable to produce insulin. Type 2 diabetes, on the other hand, develops when the body does not produce enough insulin or cannot use insulin correctly. Type 2 diabetes can be managed with medication, lifestyle changes and diet, while people with Type 1 diabetes must inject themselves with insulin numerous times a day.
Nearly 9.2 million people live with Type 1 diabetes worldwide, so it is not a trivial thing to say that sometime soon they will no longer have to rely on something outside their bodies to provide them with a vital hormone.
It’s all in the Crystals
The study, which was published in January of 2026 in Science Translational Medicine, was led by Dr. Shady Farah, an assistant professor at the Technion in Haifa, along with colleagues from MIT, Harvard, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Massachusetts.
As the Jerusalem Post reports, the cell-based implant presented to the world in the study, basically serves as an organ that regulates itself and produces medicine as needed, without the need for injections or external pumps.
More importantly though, the researchers solved one of the historically primary problems with cell-based implants. You see, the body’s immune system is primed to destroy cells it does not recognize. And so, even if scientists could create a cell-based implant to treat one disease or another — in this case, produce insulin — the body would reject and destroy the implant before it could work.
In order to get around this issue, as Israel.com reports, Farah and his team developed a shield of engineered therapeutic crystals around the cell. This shield keeps the body from identifying the implant as something foreign, allowing it to work as it should.
“The crystalline protection is what allows the implant to function over time,” Farah told Israel.com. “Without it, the immune system would destroy the therapeutic cells.”
The researchers hope that this structure could eventually be used to create implants that can treat other chronic, metabolic, or genetic diseases such as hemophilia, the treatment for which requires the regular delivery of clotting factors to the blood.
Currently, the new implant is still a long way from being available to patients with Type 1 diabetes. However, it still marks a massive breakthrough, not only for those who suffer from diabetes, but for medicine in general. Essentially, it marks a whole new world of living medicines that could change lives all over the world.
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