AUTHOR=Sá Joana , Sá Simone , Leménager Hélène , Costa Raquel , Onteniente Brigitte , Soares Raquel , Ribeiro Viviana P. , Oliveira Ana L. 

TITLE=Advancing diabetes treatment: from human beta cell technology to bioartificial pancreas development 

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Biomaterials Science

VOLUME=Volume 4 - 2025

YEAR=2025

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/biomaterials-science/articles/10.3389/fbiom.2025.1524518

DOI=10.3389/fbiom.2025.1524518

ISSN=2813-3749

ABSTRACT=In 2021, approximately 537 million people worldwide, primarily in low- and middle-income countries, were affected by diabetes, leading to approximately 6.7 million deaths annually or severe secondary complications including life-threatening hyperglycemia. For nearly 50 years, current therapeutic approaches include full pancreas transplantation and isolated pancreatic islets, more recently, cell therapy such as in vitro generated islets and stem cell derived. The transplantation of pancreatic islet cells can be less invasive than full organ transplantation, however, does not achieve the same rate of functional success due to the low survival of the engrafted cells. Tissue-engineered bioartificial pancreas has been designed to address such issues, improving cell engraftment, survival, and immune rejection problems, with the added advantage that the tissue produced in vitro has an unlimited source of material.