I disagree. The fact they can now mass produce insulin producing islets and have a mechanism of ensuring the immune system doesn't attack them means it's very likely to be a long term cure.

The mice they have been testing have maintained their glucose at human levels for months (they generally run 60-80 points higher than humans). They've binged and fasted them, made them sick and everything and their levels have maintained.

This is definitely promising, don't be such a wet blanket before researching a little bit!

The mice were SCID mice. They have no adaptive immune system to speak of. I made another post in this thread and included some links.

This is a very incredible result though. Even if immunosuppressants are required, think of all the non-patient outcomes: easily sourced human SC-beta cells for research and high throughput study. This stuff can be grown at volume, and the techniques will only improve. The results will also inform research into other cell lines. Bottom line, this is yet another step forward for stem cell tech.

Yes, and I imagine that one possibility is to retransplant new cells as the existing ones are killed off by the immune system. Not an elegant solution to an engineer, but medicine is full of inelegant solutions.