Source: Max Planck Institute
Date: August 6, 2009
Summary:
If the insulin-producing cells of our body based, it can develop diabetes - one of the most common metabolic disease of western industrialized nations. Through the body's own insulin-producing cells to replace, has long been a dream of diabetes researchers. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (Göttingen) this goal are now one step closer to. Turns the researchers in diabetic mice, a single gene in the pancreatic cells, it turned them into insulin-producing cells. Could this conversion in humans selectively regulate the future, this could open up new therapeutic pathways to diabetes successfully treated. The study is published in the journal Cell
Below is additional coverage of this development from various sources:
Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, August 6, 2009: "Researchers Show Non-Insulin-Producing Alpha Cells in the Pancreas Can Be Converted To Insulin-Producing Beta Cells":
"In findings that add to the prospects of regenerating insulin-producing cells in people with type 1 diabetes, researchers in Europe -- co-funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation -- have shown that insulin-producing beta cells can be derived from non-insulin-producing cells in the pancreas."
Los Angeles Times, August 8, 2009: "Scientists alter pancreatic cells to treat Type 1 diabetes":
"... a team of European and American researchers showed that pancreatic cells in diabetic mice could be reprogrammed into beta cells by turning on just one gene, called Pax4. The scientists gave the mice a chemical called streptozotocin that killed off their beta cells while preserving other types of pancreatic cells. Then they activated the Pax4 gene, which does most of its work during fetal development."
