8/1/2016
Researchers have for the first time created insulin sevreting pancreatic cells from human skin. This could be a major break through in the treatment of diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is where the pancreas fails to produce insulin. In these cases the new cells could revive the pancreas. Many long term type 2 diabetics have a compromised pancreas because it has been overproducing insulin to counter the effects of insulin resistance.
The study, conducted by researchers at the Gladstone Institutes and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), has already been used to prevent the development of type 1 diabetes in mouse models.
“Our results demonstrate for the first time that human adult skin cells can be used to efficiently and rapidly generate functional pancreatic cells that behave similar to human beta cells,” said Matthias Hebrok, PhD, director of the Diabetes Centre at UCSF and a co-senior author on the study. “This finding opens up the opportunity for the analysis of patient-specific pancreatic beta cell properties and the optimisation of cell therapy approaches.”
Skin cells were taken and reprogrammed into endoderm progenitor cells. These are young cells that engineered to grow into many different types of cells. This method is very similar to using stem cells however it has the advantage that cells can be turned into pancreatic cells much more quickly.
Once the researcher have the pancreatic precursor cells the are then developed into the insulin secreting beta cells. The research was based on a mouse model and when the new insulin secreting beat cells were transplanted into mice, the new cells prevented the onset and the development of diabetes.
“This study represents the first successful creation of human insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells using a direct cellular reprogramming method,” said first author Saiyong Zhu, PhD, of the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease. “The final step was the most unique – and the most difficult – as molecules had not previously been identified that could take reprogrammed cells the final step to functional pancreatic cells in a dish.”
“This new cellular reprogramming and expansion paradigm is more sustainable and scalable than previous methods,” said Sheng Ding, a senior investigator in the Roddenberry Stem Cell Centre at Gladstone and co-senior author on the study. “Using this approach, cell production can be massively increased while maintaining quality control at multiple steps. This development ensures much greater regulation in the manufacturing process of new cells. Now we can generate virtually unlimited numbers of patient-matched insulin-producing pancreatic cells.”
Click this link to view the published study in Nature Communications.
Click here to read how the story was reported in Diabetes UK
