What Potential is there for Liposomal-Based Nanotherapy for the Treatment of Type 1 Diabetes?

Abstract

Type 1 diabetes & current immunotherapies Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a chronic metabolic disease that results from the autoimmune attack against insulin-producing β-cells in the islets of Langerhans of the pancreas. The etiology of the disease is unknown and the patients require exogenous insulin administration, but the control of glycemia is not always easy to achieve. The long preclinical asymptomatic period and the difficult access to the target organ have impaired the understanding of the causes and the finding of a cure for the dis ease. Currently, there is no treatment to restore endogenous insulin secretion in patients with T1D and the incidence of the disease is increasing by 3–4% per year in developing countries, especially among young children. Therefore, there is a need for improved immunotherapies to arrest the autoimmune destruction and to induce long-term tolerance, avoiding systemic side effects and allowing β-cell regeneration. During the last decades, many clinical trials using immunotherapies for T1D have been developed. Unfortunately, none of these approaches has been able to prevent or cure human T1D. Some innovative strategies to develop immunomodulatory agents for T1D are based on nanotechnology and use nanoparticles not only as delivery systems but also as immunomodulatory agents [1]. Liposomal-based nanotherapy inspired by a physiological process