Humans have around 30 trillion cells in our adult bodies. Amazingly, each of these cells came from a handful of about 100 stem cells in the earliest days of development. The ability of these embryonic stem cells to turn into any cell type makes them pluripotent — something that researchers are harnessing in science and medicine today.

The use of human embryonic stem cells in research began in 1998, when several human embryos were donated from couples undergoing in vitro fertilization. From these embryos, scientists generated a virtually unlimited supply of pluripotent cells. Almost 30 years later, these embryonic stem cell lines are still used in many research labs today.

Another milestone in stem cell research came in 2007, when two labs — led by Shinya Yamanaka at the University of Kyoto in Japan and by James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States — separately published papers on how they had reprogrammed mature cells (like skin cells) back to a stem cell-like pluripotent state.

These are known as induced pluripotent stem cells. Their main benefit is that they carry a person’s own DNA, enabling more personalized disease-modelling and therapies.

How can stem cells be used for diabetes treatment?

In our research lab, we use embryonic stem cells to generate insulin-producing beta cells — the cell type that is destroyed by the immune system in people with Type 1 diabetes. The loss of........

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