Hydrogel Implant To Treat Diabetes
Hydrogel Implant To Treat Diabetes
This image, captured by Omid Veiseh, Joshua Doloff, Minglin Ma, Alan Chiu, and Arturo Vegas, shows an artificial pancreas that could eliminate the routine of pinpricks and injections for type 1 diabetics.
Koch Institute at MIT, MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, Institute of Medical Engineering and Science
Omid Veiseh, Joshua Doloff, Minglin Ma, Alan Chiu, Arturo Vegas and Daniel G. Anderson
Anderson and Langer Laboratories, Koch Institute
"The image shows the tissue remodeling that occurs after transplant of biomaterials in to mice. Here we have transplanted a hydrogel material that is developed for pancreatic islet cell transplantation as therapy for diabetes. The green color represents insulin producing pancreatic islets cells and the other colors represent cells of the host animal interacting with our transplanted materials.
A better understanding of the key cells involved in the response transplanted materials can help better guide us in developing new more compatible biomaterials for transplantations. Our aim is to develop new materials that do not invoke an immunological response but yet can integrate in to the body and perform their function."
