For years, Amanda Smith and her husband were jolted awake at night by a buzz-buzz-beep - an alarm warning that her blood sugar was too high or too low. She would reach for juice boxes stored in her nightstand or fiddle with her pump to release a bolus of insulin.
On Valentine's Day 2023, doctors transplanted replacement islet cells, grown in a lab from embryonic stem cells, into a blood vessel that feeds Smith's liver. By August, she no longer needed insulin.
You didn't realize how much of your life it took up - until it's taking up none, now.
Smith is at the forefront of a medical experiment that seeks to treat the root cause of diabetes by replacing the cells the disease destroys.
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