Mayo Clinic researchers find ‘sugar coating’ cells can protect those typically destroyed in type 1 diabetes
- Rebecca Guldberg
- Sep 15
- 2 min read
Researchers at Mayo Clinic have discovered something pretty fascinating: a trick that cancer cells use to hide from the immune system might be repurposed to protect insulin-producing cells in people with type 1 diabetes. Normally, in type 1 diabetes, the immune system mistakenly sees pancreatic beta cells—the ones that make insulin—as invaders and attacks them. The team thought, what if you could shield those beta cells in the same way cancer cells cloak themselves?
Cancer cells often display a sugar molecule called sialic acid on their surfaces; this “sugar coating” helps them look less foreign to immune defenses. The Mayo team focused on an enzyme called ST8Sia6, which increases the amount of that sugar coating. In their experiments with animal models that naturally develop type 1 diabetes, they engineered beta cells so they would produce this enzyme themselves.
The results were impressive: roughly 90% of the time, those engineered cells were able to survive the autoimmune assault that usually destroys beta cells. What’s even more interesting is that the immune system remained otherwise active—it wasn’t suppressed overall, just didn’t attack the modified beta cells. That suggests this is a targeted form of protection rather than blunt immunosuppression, which carries more risks.
Of course, this is early-stage, preclinical research. There’s still a lot of work to be done before this could be used in people, particularly to figure out if transplantable beta cells with this modification can be used without requiring lifetime immunosuppression. But it’s a hopeful step toward therapies that might more precisely protect the insulin-making cells, possibly reducing some of the burdens and side effects of current treatments for type 1 diabetes.
Read the full article on the Mayo Clinic website HERE.
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