Today in the 21st century, diabetes is not only more common in middle-aged and elderly people, but also has a high incidence at every age, and tends to develop at a younger age. According to the latest survey, the prevalence of diabetes among adults aged 18 and over in my country is as high as 11.6%, and the number of people with prediabetes accounts for 50.1% of the total population.
There are many reasons for diabetes (such as: viral infection, unreasonable diet, genetics, lack of exercise, mental factors, etc.). Among them, the pressure of social competition, unreasonable diet, and less exercise also make diabetes appear younger.
The most commonly used method for people with diabetes is to use insulin. Although there are many such drugs that can alleviate the symptoms of diabetes, they can only be relieved. Patients cannot get rid of insulin for life, and they need to strictly control the dosage, and they cannot fundamentally solve diabetes. There is no better way so far.
Therefore, scientists have set their sights on stem cell technology. Stem cells have a high degree of self-replication and multi-directional differentiation potential, and can secrete a variety of cytokines under specific conditions, which are the best seeds for rebuilding islet function.
The mystery of life lies in how a fertilized egg develops into a complex organism. In this process, stem cells that can proliferate and differentiate play an extremely important role. It can be said that stem cells are the origin of human life.
For more than 60 years, scientists' research on stem cells has never stopped. The research results in the field of stem cells once ranked first among the "Top Ten Scientific and Technological Achievements in the World at the End of the 20th Century" by Time Magazine, and also won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2012.
Today, stem cell therapy still attracts much attention, emerging companies emerge in an endless stream, and large pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer, Novo Nordisk, Takeda, etc. have also set foot in the development and clinical application of this technology.
More than 60 years later, a new generation of therapy has emerged
The discovery of stem cells dates back to the 1960s. This is a class of cells with unlimited or immortal self-renewal capacity capable of producing at least one type of highly differentiated progeny cells. This feature opens up broad prospects for its application in the medical field.
With the continuous research and exploration of human beings, in addition to stem cell transplantation, more than ten first-generation stem cell therapy products have been approved for clinical use worldwide. For example, FCB-Pharmicell's HeartiCellgram-AMI was approved in Korea in 2011 for the treatment of acute myocardial infarction; Osiris' Prochymal was approved in Canada in 2012 for the treatment of pediatric graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) .
According to a review published in May this year by Nature reviews drug discovery, a subsidiary of the journal Nature, a new generation of stem cell therapies based on genetic and cell modifications are emerging. These therapies are expected to improve the effectiveness and specificity of stem cell therapy and expand the range of diseases treated to a wider range of fields.
