Working on diabetes:

The first successful transplant of insulin-producing cells from a live donor — a mother to her daughter — is being reported today by Japanese scientists, raising hopes for a cure for severe diabetes.
Diabetes experts caution that the procedure has been performed only once and in a patient whose diabetes was not typical. But the accomplishment is “dramatic,” says Robert Goldstein, chief scientific officer of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
Both the patient, a 27-year-old woman, and her mother, 56, are healthy and have normal blood sugar levels, lead author Shinichi Matsumoto and colleagues say. Their article was posted online Monday ahead of publication in the British medical journal The Lancet. The patient is considered cured for now, but whether the disease will return is uncertain.