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The above explained research gives the hope for many patients with type I diabetes mellitus or juvenile diabetes, but also has side effects and contraindications. There are several more novel approaches to this disorder.

Another novel treatment option for type I diabetes mellitus involves stem cells. This is a very promising research topic, but the trials are still at preclinical stage. The scientists from University of Missouri have developed a combination of medication and stem cell treatment in order to cure type I diabetes. The main cause of this disorder occurring in the childhood is an autoimmune reaction against insulin producing cells (beta cells) of pancreas, but besides that, scientists realized that the autoimmune process damages also the blood vessels which provide blood supply to beta cells. Therefore, they have developed a drug which inhibits the autoimmune process, and used bone marrow stem cells to reconstruct damaged blood vessels.

The drug they developed is called Ig-GAD2, which is proven to stop the destruction of beta cells by immune system, but alone showed a very limited regeneration of beta cells which is crucial for the recovery. When they introduced bone marrow stem cells, they expected them to differentiate into pancreatic beta cells, but then something interesting happened. Namely, the stem cells did not become beta cells, but they engaged in forming new blood vessels which regenerated blood supply to pancreatic tissue thus inducing the reproduction of beta cells. It was a fascinating discovery, but in order to enter clinical studies, more safety and efficacy studies are needed.

This discovery is important because it shows the importance of blood vessels regeneration, not only for diabetes, but perhaps for many other organ-specific autoimmune diseases.

Pancreas transplant is currently used when possible, but the patient has to take immunosuppressive therapy for the rest of the life in order to prevent organ rejection. Scientists currently work on growing human pancreas in animal organisms using human stem cells. In that case, the person would get its own, brand new pancreas, but there is no guarantee that autoimmune process will not attack it too.