This Scientific American article is about how HIV and Zika viruses can remain in a person by hiding in "immune-privileged sites" while being otherwise undetectable in other parts of the body. The main site being described in the article is in men's testes.
According to the article, there are special cells called "Sertoli cells" which serve the purpose of blocking the immune system from destroying sperm cells, while also allowing nutrients to be delivered to them.
One researcher is working on a way to use these cells as part of an insulin-delivery system which could protect itself from the autoimmune response.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-private-place-where-hiv-zika-and-ebola-hide/
“We’ve had tremendous improvement in controlling diabetes with insulin pumps and drugs, but none of them adequately control insulin,” Dufour says. And so she and others have been working on taking pancreatic islet cells, which are the body’s natural insulin producers but are damaged in those with diabetes, and Sertoli cells to co-transplant the mixture elsewhere in the body. This is especially apt for type 1 diabetes, which is thought to be an autoimmune disease: “Sertoli cells already know how to prevent an attack from the immune system,” Dufour says.... The method is a few years away from being tested in the clinic, but “if we can get this to work, then we’ll have a way where insulin is produced and regulated within the body again,” Dufour says. “Patients won’t have to rely on injections or daily medications.”
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