GoKawiil
Tech News
A study of more than 100,000 people found that those with more 'active' brown fat—tissue that burns calories to generate heat—had lower rates of conditions including type 2 diabetes, depression and anxiety. Researchers used an AI model to measure active brown fat from medical scans and compared it against participants' health records. The findings were published in Nature.
Breakthrough T1D, a major diabetes nonprofit, dismissed three board members of its affiliated venture-capital arm, the T1D Fund. The nonprofit says the move was meant to safeguard donor interests, while the ousted members contend it undermined the fund's independence.
Harvard Medical School researchers led by postdoctoral researcher Jian Li identified a gene, ALDH3B2, that normally suppresses the natural but rare tendency of pancreatic ductal cells to turn into insulin-producing beta-like cells. Silencing this gene in a genetic screen raised the conversion rate from under 1 percent to about 8.5 percent, and when these altered human cells were transplanted into diabetic mice, the animals began producing human insulin and their blood glucose levels fell close to normal.
A Nature Index 2026 feature on regenerative medicine reviews progress in cell therapy and tissue engineering, including the use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to pursue treatments for autoimmune diseases, Parkinson's disease and heart failure. It also notes clinical trials using stem-cell transplants to replace insulin-producing cells in people with type 1 diabetes have shown some success.
Researchers led by immunologist Hongkui Deng at Peking University transplanted lab-grown pancreatic islet cells, derived from a patient's own reprogrammed fat cells, into a young woman with type 1 diabetes. Nearly three years after the 2024 procedure, she no longer requires insulin injections and reports stable blood-sugar levels.
A growing number of children and teenagers with obesity or type 2 diabetes are being prescribed GLP-1 medications, drugs originally developed for adults. Physicians and researchers say long-term safety and developmental effects of these treatments in younger patients remain largely unstudied.