Bringing diabetes cure within arm's reach

Toby Coates, AO
Clinician-scientist and renal transplant nephrologist

Toby just may have discovered type 1 diabetes treatment’s holy grail: finding a simple and affordable way to help patients restore their bodies’ ability to produce insulin.

In a recent world-first surgery, Toby and his team inserted a patch of artificial skin in a patient’s arm to create a vascularised transplant site, which they then injected with insulin-producing islet cells. And so far, those cells are doing their job beautifully. Given the difficulty and cost of transplanting islet cells into the liver—the current leading technique for creating insulin independence—Toby’s novel approach could be game-changing.

“This could be historic,” says Toby.