cells Review Inducible Pluripotent Stem Cells as a Potential Cure for Diabetes Kevin Verhoeff 1,* , Sarah J. Henschke 2, Braulio A. Marfil-Garza 1 , Nidheesh Dadheech 3 and Andrew Mark James Shapiro 4 1 Department of Surgery, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2B7, Canada; marfi
[email protected] 2 Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N 0W8, Canada;
[email protected] 3 Alberta Diabetes Institute, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2B7, Canada;
[email protected] 4 FRCS (Eng) FRCSC MSM FCAHS, Clinical Islet Transplant Program, Alberta Diabetes Institute, Department of Surgery, Canadian National Transplant Research Program, Edmonton, AB T6G 2B7, Canada;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +1-780-984-1836 Abstract: Over the last century, diabetes has been treated with subcutaneous insulin, a discovery that enabled patients to forego death from hyperglycemia. Despite novel insulin formulations, patients with diabetes continue to suffer morbidity and mortality with unsustainable costs to the health care system. Continuous glucose monitoring, wearable insulin pumps, and closed-loop artificial pancreas systems represent an advance, but still fail to recreate physiologic euglycemia and are not universally available. Islet cell transplantation has evolved into a successful modality for treating a subset of patients with ‘brittle’ diabetes but is limited by organ donor supply and immunosuppression requirements. A novel approach involves generating autologous or immune-protected islet cells for transplant from inducible pluripotent stem cells to eliminate detrimental immune responses and organ supply limitations. In this review, we briefly discuss novel mechanisms for subcutaneous Citation: Verhoeff, K.; Henschke, S.J.; insulin delivery and define their shortfalls.