Dr. Harald Stover, who is also co-founder of Hamilton-based Allarta Life Sciences, says a cure for type 1 diabetes is potentially five to 10 years away from becoming a reality thanks to a synthetic hydrogel transplant treatment that local researchers are working on . Story continues below ad “In type 1 diabetes, patients have lost their own cells that normally regulate their sugar, so the treatment is to replace them with cells derived from stem cells or other insulin-producing cells,” Stover told Hamilton’s Good Morning 900 CHML.

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“But they have to be protected by the patient’s immune system. We have developed hydrogels that can protect these transplanted cells from being destroyed again by the patient’s immune system.” More than 5.7 million Canadians are affected by type 1 or type 2 diabetes. In total, about 12 million Canadians are affected by depression or have prediabetes — a condition that, if left untreated, could develop into type 2 diabetes. Trending Stories

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People with type 1 diabetes usually lose insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreatic islets, which creates problems with blood sugar control and eventually diabetes. At present, treatment for Type 1 disease is essentially limited to drugs, usually insulin. 2:46 Ford says 90% of Ontarians are treated within 8 hours at ERs Previous video Next video Story continues below ad Type 2 can be alleviated through dietary changes, exercise and weight loss. Insulin was first discovered as a treatment by a pair of University of Toronto medical researchers, Charles Best and Frederick Banting, in 1922. It is the same institution that pioneered the possibility of inserting transplanted islets into the pancreas to control blood sugar some 40 years ago. Stover says the ultimate challenge for any treatment is overcoming the human immune system, which he describes as “very, very skittish” when it comes to dealing with foreign materials entering the body. “So many things have worked in rodents and other animals, but very little has worked in humans so far,” Stover said. With hydrogels the potential solution, the next challenge to overcome is finding an adequate delivery system for the mechanism.

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Once solved, the technology has the potential to treat other common ailments. “Cell therapies are shaping up to be a new branch, if you will, of modern medicine,” Stover said. “In principle, any medical indication where a patient is missing an enzyme or hormone, including different forms of hemophilia, perhaps even Parkinson’s disease, can be treated by transplanted cells that produce an enzyme or hormone.” Story continues below ad The McMaster technology is likely scheduled for clinical trials in 2024 and will target eligible candidates between the ages of 18 and 65 who will be recruited through a network of third parties. © 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.