Successful treatments for type 1 diabetes are scarce. Pancreas transplants are one method for curing the disease, but they frequently fail and still require drugs that suppress your immune system. However, a new, better treatment may be on the horizon after a team of scientists out of UCSF managed to turn human stem cells into functional insulin-producing ones by jumpstarting the development of stem cells, which causes responses to blood sugar that align more with mature cells. This marks the first time that stem cells have been converted into functioning cells that produce insulin, and while the technique has only been tested on mice so far, further trials could lead to a potential treatment.