3D printing could enable a safer long-term therapy for type 1 diabetes

Researchers have 3D printed devices made from insulin producing cells. These devices could allow long -term treatment of type 1 diabetes which would allow people to produce their own insulin – without requiring invasive surgery.

Since people with type 1 diabetes cannot make enough insulin to regulate their blood sugar, they must constantly manage their condition, generally with injections and food precautions. Longer -term treatment implies the transplantation of human islets – clusters of insulin producing cells which generally develop in the pancreas – donors. But as an organ transplant, it requires invasive surgery.

“Current practice is to inject these human islets through the vein of the portal in the liver,” explains Quentin Perrier at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina. However, about half of the islets implanted quickly lose their functionality, which means that people have to undergo several transplants to make treatment effective.

If the islets could be placed directly under the skin, surgery would not only be less invasive, but it would also produce less stress and inflammation which shortens the functional life of cells.

“The higher the density [of islets]The more the size of the device would need you to plant in the patient, ”explains Adam Feinberg at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania and the Biotech Company Fluidform organic in the Massachusetts.

To reach this high density, Perrier and his 3D colleagues printed islets of a “bioink” in human pancreatic fabric and alginate, a type of carbohydrates derived from algae. Lifestyle cells producing insulin have been mixed in this material.

“We put this biose with the [human] island in a syringe, and we print a special motif [with it]Said Perrier. This porous grid is designed to allow new blood vessels to develop around and through the structure.

In the laboratory, this technique “works very well”, explains Perrier, noting that around 90% of islet cells survived and operated up to three weeks. “The next challenge is really to validate this observation in vivo.Perrier and his colleagues presented their research at the meeting of the transplantation of European organs (ESOT) 2025 in London on June 29.

Feinberg and his colleagues also printed in 3D their own islets. Their technique is to make a frame by printing cells and collagen directly in hydrogel polymer – “a bit like 3D printing inside the hair gel”, he says. It was presented at the International Reunion of Pancreas & Islet Transplant Association 2025 in Pisa, Italy, June 16. In diabetic laboratory mice, the islets restored normal glucose control for up to six months.

Feinberg says that Perrier’s work is “definitively promising” but that the inherent variability of the human fabric used to make islets could pose challenges in a living body. “It’s like getting a transplantation body,” he says. “On the one hand, the material can work better. On the other hand, it is variable and difficult to obtain, and it is a really difficult problem to solve.”

To avoid such transplantation problems, Feinberg and Perrier say that therapies on stem cells represent the future of type 1 diabetes treatment. The use of stem cells in the 3D printing process – instead of the cells they currently use – could solve many problems at the same time, they say.