The following report by medical editor Marilyn Brooks first aired Oct. 27, 2005, on Channel 4 Action News at 5 p.m.

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Type 1 diabetes occurs because the pancreas fails to produce insulin.

The only way diabetics can get that insulin is through daily injections.

Researchers now say a new cell transplant procedure that is currently in clinical trials may one day eliminate the need for those injections.

Antonella Soliana has struggled with type 1 diabetes for most of her 44 years . Soliana needed multiple daily insulin injections to control her blood sugar. Now, that struggle is over.

Her condition is well under control. An experimental transplant procedure has turned her life around.

Her doctor helped develop a way to eliminate those shots by transplanting islet, or insulin-producing, cells from a donated pancreas into her liver. There, the cells regenerate and manufacture a steady supply of insulin.

"The procedure itself is very simple. It's like a blood transfusion, only it happens in a vein that goes to the liver," said Dr. Camillo Ricordi of the American Diabetes Institute.

Once the islet cells are separated from the donated pancreas and purified, doctors transplant the cells through a small incision.

"Having a cell or hundreds of thousands of cells producing insulin in a minute-by-minute fashion allows you to control metabolism and glucose levels much better than through insulin injections," said Ricordi.

It's not perfect. Patients like Soliana must take anti-rejection drugs to avoid adverse side effects. Researchers continue to look for new ways to get the body's immune system to accept the foreign cells. But in the interim, patients who undergo the procedure "can now go back to normal activity and don't have to worry about constantly managing blood glucose," said Ricordi.

Currently, the clinical trials are restricted to patients with type 1 diabetes only.

It will likely take years before the treatment is widely available. But Ricordi believes that continues research will one day make islet cell transplantation the treatment of choice for millions of diabetic patients worldwide.