Why can’t islet transplantation be scaled to treat all diabetes patients?

Islet transplantation is one of the closest existing approaches to a functional cure for diabetes. The procedure involves transplanting insulin-producing islet cells from a donor pancreas into a patient, where they can restore natural insulin production and, in successful cases, eliminate the need for insulin injections. When it works, it offers a genuine glimpse of what a diabetes cure could look like.

The fundamental problem is supply. The procedure depends entirely on the availability of donor pancreases, which are scarce. Even with optimal organ donation rates, the number of suitable donor pancreases falls far short of the global need. There are hundreds of millions of people living with diabetes worldwide, and islet transplantation could never realistically reach more than a small fraction of them.

Recipients also typically require lifelong immunosuppressive therapy to prevent the body from rejecting the transplanted cells. These drugs reduce immune function broadly, increasing the long-term risk of infection and certain cancers, which is a significant burden that limits the procedure’s suitability for many patients. Developing a scalable, donor-independent alternative to islet transplantation that does not require immunosuppression is the central challenge that RMS’s iPSC-based therapy is designed to solve.

See how RMS’s stem cell therapy differs from islet transplantation.