Kyoto University Hospital is looking to develop a treatment for severe Type 1 diabetes using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells reprogrammed to function as pancreatic islet cells, which produce the hormones that regulate glucose levels in the blood.

The hospital announced Monday that it will start a clinical trial to transplant such cells to three people as early as next February. If proven safe and effective, the study could pave the way for a treatment that would eliminate the need for Type 1 diabetes patients to get daily insulin shots. Currently, 100,000 to 140,000 people in Japan have the disease.

Pending the results of the clinical trial, researchers are hoping that a transplant treatment using iPS cell-derived pancreatic cells will be available in the 2030s.

The trial involves sheets of such pancreatic cells being transplanted into three patients with severe Type 1 diabetes. The patients ¡ª between the ages of 20 and 65 ¡ª will also receive immunosuppressants and insulin treatments during the trial.

The researchers will use iPS cell-derived pancreatic islet cells, developed by Taro Toyoda, a lecturer at the university¡¯s Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA). Shinya Yamanaka, the founding director of CiRA, won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2012 for his discovery of iPS cells, which are mature cells that can be reprogrammed to turn into any type of cell.

In the trial, iPS cells from healthy donors will be turned into pancreatic cells before they are laid out on sheets, which will then be transplanted into the patients. Their conditions will be closely monitored for a year after the transplants to check for adverse side effects.

People with Type 1 diabetes produce little or no insulin in their pancreas. As such, they need a regular dose of insulin, a hormone that converts glucose into energy. The exact cause of Type 1 diabetes is unknown, but it occurs due to the body¡¯s immune system destroying the pancreatic islets that produce insulin in the pancreas.

The transplantation of pancreatic cells from the deceased has been approved for public health insurance coverage in Japan, but a shortage of donors has led to few patients receiving such transplants.

¡°We would feel very happy if we could get a glimpse of a world where insulin injections are no longer necessary,¡± Daisuke Yabe, a diabetes specialist at Kyoto University who is leading the project, told reporters Monday. ¡°We hope this will be the first step toward the fundamental cure of the disease.¡±