The Future Of Diabetes Treatment

By Jennifer Dennis-Wall, Ph.D.

Type 1 diabetes affects millions of people in the US alone. What’s worse is that the majority of patients do not achieve good control of their blood glucose levels. Management of type 1 diabetes has traditionally been cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive, so better treatment methods are sorely needed.

For those of us who are living with or who have a family member living with type 1 diabetes, we are probably well acquainted with the promises of pancreas transplants, islet stem cell therapy, and other science fiction. But what types of advances can we realistically hope for in the next 5 to 10 years? Or maybe even in the next 2 years?