What is the difference between managing diabetes and curing it?

The difference between managing diabetes and curing it is fundamental to understanding why stem cell research matters. Current diabetes treatments, primarily insulin therapy for type 1, and a range of medications and lifestyle interventions for type 2, are highly effective at controlling blood glucose levels and reducing the risk of complications. They are, in many cases, lifesaving. But they do not address the underlying cause of the disease.

Diabetes arises from the loss or dysfunction of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Existing treatments compensate for this loss externally, supplying insulin the body can no longer produce, or reducing the demand placed on remaining beta cells. They require continuous management, daily administration, and lifelong commitment. They do not restore the body’s own ability to regulate blood glucose.

A cure for diabetes, by contrast, would restore that function, enabling the body to produce and regulate insulin naturally, without ongoing external intervention. For most researchers in the field, a functional cure means replacing or regenerating the beta cells that diabetes has destroyed. That is the goal that RMS’s iPSC-based stem cell therapy is designed to achieve.

Learn about RMS’s prospective diabetes cure.