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Forget Insulin Injections: New Patches Integrate Pancreatic Beta Cells to Control Blood Glucose

March 16, 2016

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University researchers may be fundamentally changing how insulin is delivered to help treat diabetes. Currently most people either use needle injections or insulin pumps, while pancreatic beta cell transplants have not been advanced enough for adoption. Needles are painful and improper injections can lead to hypoglycemia, while pumps are not for everyone and have their own limitations.

The North Carolina team developed a patch that embeds natural beta cells within the tiny polymer needles across its surface. This allows the cells to behave naturally without directly interacting with the body, and so not causing an immune response.

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