Isn't it neat when the secrets to medical science lie in obvious but overlooked places? In the latest example, the cure for diabetes may have been rattling around in our own noggins this whole time. Or at least, it seems to have been hidden in the brains of rats. Researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba Science City in Japan (they have science cities in Japan? I want to go) have found that neural stem cells can be manipulated to convince the pancreas to work the way it should again. 

Diabetes, as you may know, comes in two forms of nastiness: you have your type 1, wherein the immune system attacks and destroys insulin-producing beta cells, and your type 2, where those same beta cells fail to produce enough insulin in the first place. Neither kind is any good to have in your body, yet at least 171 million people suffer from the disease--mostly type 2, which makes up about 90% of total diabetes cases. 

Tomoko Kuwabara and colleagues have been researching stem cell treatment for the disease--and it's now seeing some results. The team extracted brain tissue through the noses of lab rats, isolated neural stem cells, and exposed them to a protein that activates insulin production (as well as an antibody that prevents insulin production inhibitors from doing their thing). They then multiplied the cells, laid them out on sheets of collagen, and laid the sheets right on top of the rats' pancreas. The organ accepted and started using the cells. It took only a week for insulin blood concentration in the diabetic rats to return to normal. They became essentially diabetes-free and otherwise perfectly healthy. 

What's great about this kind of stem cell treatment is that it'll almost definitely work on humans and it doesn't require any kind of embryonic cell harvesting, which tends to rub people the wrong way over here in the states. The neural stem cells can be safely extracted from living brains through the nose. It's a little creepy, sure, but it's harmless--you don't need all the cells in your olfactory bulb and they can certainly be better used to make insulin in your pancreas. There's also no need for any kind of genetic manipulation. You simply take stem cells, proteins, and antibodies and swirl them all together to create a pancreas-fixing cocktail. The research team's next step will be to make sure the procedure actually does work on humans, but if the rat trials are any indication, we might be seeing a way around this whole diabetes epidemic in the near future. Awesome!