Liposomes, nanobolites with fatty cover and insulin particles inside, manage to deceive the immune system of diabetic mice.Its immune system systematically destroys beta cells, those in charge of generating insulin, and those injected liposomes near the pancreas get the autoimmune reaction suffered by diabetics to modulate and that the attack against their own cells ceases.
It is a finding of the Diabetes immunology Group of Can Ruti and the Icrea Group of the Institut Català de Nanociència i nanotechnology (ICN2).The two groups have patented this concept of treatment, which are convinced that it is a great step to achieve a future vaccine that stops the self -destructive process that is type 1 diabetes, which forces to get insulin several times the day.
The results with diabetic mice (a species that is born with that disease) appear in the scientific journal PLOS One. “The next step is to do the same tests in in vitro human cells and also try to cure diabetic mice, repeat the process not onlyTo stop destruction, but to reverse the disease, achieve the regeneration of these beta cells that do not manufacture insulin, ”describes the main researcher the study, Marta Vives, head of the Can Ruti Diabetes Imbetes Imbetes Group.Patients from the Can Ruti hospital will probably participate.And they also want to do another study to refine guidelines and doses and open the possibility of making each patient.
The immune failure in diabetes occurs because beta cé-lulas when they die naturally do not emit sufficient signal to the immune system that it is not uncommon.In people - and mice - that develop diabetes, the immune system reads those cells that die as an alert, so lymphocytes begin to attack all their beta cells.After time, the pancreas almost does not manufacture insulin.
The micropoliposomes that have tried - and have shown that they work in the mice - are covered with fortatidisliserina, a compound that emits similar signals to those that should emit their own beta cells when they begin to die.And inside they carry insulin pieces.They emit, in short, a signal of tolerance towards insulin producers imitating normal system behavior."So they act as a vaccine, but not to increase the reaction, but to stop it," explains Vives.
Diabetes affects approximately 0.3% of the population, a figure that grows 4% every year, and is not always easy to control by clicking several times a day.The destruction of beta cells prevents the essential insulin from processing glucose.