At UM's Diabetes Research Institute, Cherie Stabler, a Ph.D biomedical engineer, is using nanotechnology to try to reproduce the insulin no longer made by the pancreas in people with diabetes.

Diabetes happens when the pancreas exhausts its insulin-producing beta cells. Stabler is harvesting such beta cells from cadaver donors and injecting them into the diabetes patient. They are put not into the pancreas but into the liver, which is stronger and better able to handle such poking. The cells implant there and start producing insulin.

``We've had patients off their insulin for over five years,'' she says. ``Our goal is forever.''

A problem, however, is that the patient's body sees the transplanted beta cells as foreign, just like a transplanted heart or kidney, and tries to reject them.

Enter nanotechnology: Stabler coats the implanted beta cells with alginate, a gel-like substance made of seaweed, to hide them from the body's immune system. When it's made by conventional methods, the alginate layer is 250 microns thick -- too thick to be properly implanted.

Using nanotechnology, Stabler builds up the alginate coating molecule by molecule to only 10 nanometers thick.

``It's the difference between a couple of blades of glass and a football field,'' she says.

Practical use is three to five years away, she says.

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