Researchers in China say they’ve used stem cell therapy to reverse type 1 diabetes in a 25-year-old woman. She is the first person with type 1 diabetes to receive this kind of treatment for the autoimmune condition, which was previously thought to be incurable (though there is a recently approved drug to delay type 1 diabetes onset).

The findings, published in September in the journal Cell¹, note that before treatment, the woman’s body could not produce insulin on its own and that she needed “substantial amounts” of prescription insulin to survive. But three months after the treatment (which involved extracting some of her pancreas cells, reprogramming them, and re-injecting them into her abdomen), she started naturally producing insulin. In fact, a year later, her blood sugar remains in a healthy target range for “more than 98 percent of the day,” according to the study authors.

Similar transplants have been done in the past (using cell donor samples), but they’ve mostly targeted people with type 2 diabetes, which is a metabolic (rather than autoimmune) condition that can sometimes be put into remission with certain lifestyle changes. One April 2024 study in Cell Discovery² reported a successful transplant of insulin-producing islets (aka, pancreatic cells) into a 59-year-old man with type 2 diabetes. Since the treatment, he’s stopped taking insulin, according to the findings.

Read on to find out why this new study is so unique and whether it’s a true step toward finding a type 1 diabetes cure.

So, what makes the Cell study so unique?

Past transplant studies have used cells from donors, but this one used cells from the person’s own body. This reduces the risk of your body rejecting the transplant, which can happen with donor samples, per the National Library of Medicine. It also helps mitigate the growing demand for donor samples, because your own stem cells can be cultured and stored indefinitely in a lab, according to the researchers.

Another unique thing: Instead of injecting the cells into the woman’s liver (which has been the standard procedure for past diabetes transplant treatments), stem cells were injected into her abdominal muscles. This helped researchers closely monitor the cells and remove them if needed.

By the two-and-a-half-month mark, the woman was producing enough insulin to “live without needing top-ups,” per the study.

While two other participants were involved in the Cell study, who “showed positive results,” this woman was the one who sustained a healthy level of insulin production for more than a year. Researchers need to keep an eye on participants long-term to see what the true success rate of the transplant is.

Does this mean they’ve found a type 1 diabetes cure?

Not quite yet. The researchers highlight this is a success story in one person, but the treatment needs to be replicated many more times to confirm it’s effective. We also don’t know the long-term effects and success of the treatment—the woman’s insulin levels were only tracked one year post-treatment. Researchers don’t know whether her insulin levels will stay healthy years down the road. Until then, experts can’t necessarily say that she’s “cured.”

Additionally, the woman in the study was also on immune-suppressing drugs at the time of the treatment (for a previous liver transplant). So researchers can’t say whether this helped reduce the risk of her body rejecting the stem cells. People not on immunosuppressants may not have this same positive outcome.

Bottom line: This is an amazing breakthrough and could make way for future treatments and possible cures for type 1 diabetes. But more research is needed to say that stem cells are the answer to a cure for type 1. And in the meantime, we’ll need to continue to advocate for more affordable prices of insulin for people managing the condition.