Type 1 diabetes is the most common cause of diabetes in children, although it may occur at any age. Also called juvenile diabetes, this pathology usually results from autoimmune destruction of insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. The subsequent lack of insulin, a hormone necessary to convert sugar, starches and other food into energy needed for daily life, leads to a rapid starvation of cells throughout the body. The only existing treatment for this condition relies on chronic and burdensome injections of insulin. Nevertheless, the lack of fine-tuning often leads to excess of sugar in blood and to life-threatening complications such as kidney failure, blindness or gangrene.
In healthy conditions, pancreatic insulin-producing cells, called beta-cells, have a long lifespan and replicate little during their lifetime. After extreme loss of beta-cells, such as seen in diabetes, the question arises as to whether a process of regeneration occurs. If such is the case, it may be overshadowed by the concomitant destruction of newly formed insulin-producing cells by the autoimmune mechanism.
On the brink of destruction, cells can still regenerate