Hope for diabetes: CRISPR-edited cells pump out insulin in a person — and evade immune detection

In a medical first, researchers report that they have implanted CRISPR-edited pancreas cells into a person with type 1 diabetes. The cells pumped out sugar-regulating insulin for months — without the need for the recipient to take immune-dampening drugs, thanks to gene edits that allowed the cells, collected from a deceased donor, to evade detection by the recipient’s immune system¹.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-02802-5

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Subjects

• Diabetes
• Immunology
• CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing
• Stem cells