A new way to control hyperglycemia

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a metabolic disease characterized by pancreatic insufficiency and reduced production of insulin. Imagine the pancreas as a factory for insulin, the key hormone that maintains blood sugar levels. Inside this factory are tiny assembly lines called islets.

When these islands are damaged, it's like a mini-factory disaster: the assembly line breaks down and we can't produce enough insulin, which results in problems regulating blood sugar levels, with major health implications.

Type 1 diabetes, the most common disease caused by pancreatic islet damage, has no cure. Treatment focuses on managing blood glucose levels with insulin injections. However, although exogenous insulin can temporarily stabilize blood glucose levels, frequent injections can be burdensome and lead to complications.

Islet transplantation as an alternative strategy faces the challenges of donor shortage and long-term immunosuppression. To address these issues, researchers have developed biomaterials that encapsulate islets/islet cells to reconstitute islet function. Although some progress has been made, long-term survival and sustained insulin secretion are still constrained by immune attack and inadequate nutritional supply.

Microfluidic technology, due to its precise fluid manipulation capabilities, has been used to fabricate hydrogels with customizable structures. These microcapsules have adaptive structural properties to facilitate oxygen and nutrient exchange and encapsulate other agents to control cell fate. However, accurately simulating the complete structure of a native pancreatic islet remains a challenge.

Current methods to recapitulate pancreatic islets focus on vascularization of microcapsules.

Inspired by natural pancreatic islet structure, a team of Chinese scientists has developed a microcapsule-based biomimetic artificial pancreatic islet model that integrates a microvascular network and achieves fine regulation of blood glucose levels using microfluidic high-voltage electrospray technology.

These experimental results strongly support the promise of vascularized microcapsules as a biomimetic artificial islet model and highlight its significant value in the field of diabetes treatment. This innovative technology not only offers new therapeutic options for diabetes treatment, but also opens up new directions for future medical research.

Professor Lin Li said, “Through a microfluidic strategy, we developed vascularized microcapsules as a biomimetic artificial islet model (v-MC) for blood glucose control. The microcapsule design was inspired by the vascular network structure of natural islets. The unique core-shell structure allows for smooth inflow of nutrients and oxygen while effectively protecting the encapsulated islet cells from attack by host immune cells. Moreover, v-MCs can also exchange molecules in response to glucose.”

“Through transplantation experiments in mice, we found that v-MC could significantly improve the abnormal blood glucose levels, food intake, and body weight of diabetic mice, and effectively improve glucose tolerance, indicating its potential as a therapeutic agent for diabetes.”

“Further histological analysis confirmed the safety of the transplanted v-MCs in vivo. These results indicate that the biomimetic artificial pancreatic islet model has great value in the treatment of diabetes and has broad prospects for future applications, especially in the fields of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering, which are worthy of further research and hope.”

This study was recently Published In the journal The Future of Materials.

Courtesy of Matsuyama Lake Materials Research Institute