Patients with diabetes generally rely on constant injections of insulin to control their disease. But MIT spinout Sigilon Therapeutics is developing an implantable, insulin-producing device that may one day make injections obsolete.
Sigilon recently partnered with pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company to develop “living drug factories,” made of encapsulated, engineered cells that can be safely implanted in the body, and produce insulin over the course of months or even years. Down the road, cells may also be engineered to secrete other hormones, proteins, and antibodies.
Patients with diabetes generally rely on constant injections of insulin to control their disease. But MIT spinout Sigilon Therapeutics is developing an implantable, insulin-producing device that may one day make injections obsolete.
Sigilon recently partnered with pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company to develop “living drug factories,” made of encapsulated, engineered cells that can be safely implanted in the body, and produce insulin over the course of months or even years. Down the road, cells may also be engineered to secrete other hormones, proteins, and antibodies.
The technology at Sigilon — based on research performed over the last decade at MIT — has led to creation of a device that encases cells and protects them from the patient’s immune system. This can be combined with engineered cells that produce a target therapeutic, such as insulin. The devices are tiny hydrogel beads, about 1 millimeter in diameter, that can be implanted into the patient through minimally invasive procedures.
“This allows us to have ‘living drug factories’ inside our bodies that can deliver therapeutics, at the right amount and in the right location, as needed,” says co-founder and co-inventor Daniel G. Anderson, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and Koch Institute For Integrative Cancer Research. “The hope is that this living device can be placed in a patient, avoid the need for immune-suppression, and provide long-term therapy.”
Read more at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Image: MIT spinout Sigilon Therapeutics has partnered with pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company to develop implantable medical devices that act like “living drug factories,” encapsulating engineered cells that live in the body for months, or years, and produce insulin. Down the road, cells may also be engineered to secrete other hormones, proteins, and antibodies. CREDIT: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
