Kyoto University Hospital says it has started clinical trials to transplant cells created from induced pluripotent stem cells into type one diabetes patients.



Researchers say the first patient is doing well and that they aim to put the procedure into practical use in the 2030s.



Type one diabetes is a disease in which cells that produce insulin that lowers blood sugar levels stop working properly. The condition is partly caused by abnormalities in the immune system.



Japan is believed to have more than 120,000 type one diabetes patients.



Kyoto University Hospital held a news conference on Monday.



Scientists say they made a sheet of pancreatic islet cells to produce insulin from iPS cells of healthy donors, and transplanted it in the abdomen of a patient with type one diabetes.



They say the first transplant was carried out in February this year using a sheet several centimeters square on a female patient in her 40s. The sheet was made by a venture firm in Kanagawa Prefecture, near Tokyo.



They say the main aim of the clinical trial was to confirm the safety of the procedure. They note that the woman has already been discharged from the hospital, and that no serious safety issues were confirmed in the first month after surgery.



The research team says it will carry out transplants on two more patients.



Professor Yabe Daisuke of Kyoto University's Graduate School of Medicine says no serious problems were confirmed, and that the procedure can be declared successful at this stage.



He says patients have told him about the difficulty of injecting insulin every day, and that he hopes the time will come when injections are longer necessary.