CRISPR and Diabetes: What It Could Mean for Type 2
You may have seen the recent news about CRISPR-edited pancreas cells helping someone with type 1 diabetes produce insulin without needing immune-suppressing drugs. Pretty exciting stuff!
While this is focused on type 1 diabetes, there’s potential for type 2 diabetes too. Researchers are looking at ways to use gene editing to fix genes linked to insulin production problems, like the PAX5 gene, which can affect how your pancreas secretes insulin.
There are also experimental therapies in development using CRISPR-edited stem cells to replace or support beta cells. The hope is that in the future, people with type 2 diabetes might have long-term ways to improve insulin production, beyond diet, exercise, and medication.
It’s still early days, but it’s a good example of how advances in one area of diabetes research can eventually impact others.
