Artificial Pancreas

The artificial pancreas is a technology in development to help people with diabetes automatically control their blood glucose level by providing the substitute endocrine functionality of a healthy pancreas.

There are several important exocrine (digestive) and endocrine (hormonal) functions of the pancreas, but it is the lack of insulin production which is the motivation to develop a substitute. While the current state of insulin replacement therapy is appreciated for its life-saving capability, the task of manually managing the blood sugar level with insulin alone is arduous and inadequate.

The goal of the artificial pancreas is two-fold:

1. to improve insulin replacement therapy until glycemic control is practically normal as evident by the avoidance of the complications of hyperglycemia, and
2. to ease the burden of therapy for the insulin-dependent.

Different approaches under consideration include:

• the medical equipment approach—using an insulin pump under closed loop control using real-time data from a continuous blood glucose sensor.
• the bioengineering approach—the development of a bio-artificial pancreas consisting of a biocompatible sheet of encapsulated beta cells. When surgically implanted, the islet sheet will behave as the endocrine pancreas and will be viable for years.
• the gene therapy approach—the therapeutic infection of a diabetic person by a genetically engineered virus which causes a DNA change of intestinal cells to become insulin-producing cells.