Sushi Implant: Seaweed-Encapsulated Cells for Treating Diabetes

Sushi Implant: Seaweed-Encapsulated Cells for Treating Diabetes

Collections: Image Award Winners

2013 Award Winner

Omid Veiseh, Joshua Doloff, Minglin Ma, Alan Chiu, Arturo Vegas
Anderson Laboratory

Koch Institute at MIT

Type 1 diabetes results from a civil war within the body: the immune system, for reasons not well understood, attacks and destroys blood-sugar-regulating beta cells.  Patients must carefully control their own blood sugar with frequent pinpricks and insulin injections.  But what if doctors could simply replace the destroyed cells?  In this image, researchers have placed beta cells (green) inside a ball of alginate, a seaweed-based polymer, and implanted the ball into a model organism.  This alginate capsule could protect beta cells from immune attacks while still allowing them to sense and regulate blood sugar.

Video

Omid Veiseh, Joshua Doloff, Minglin Ma, Alan Chiu, and Arturo Vegas tell the story behind their award-winning image.