Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
The potential to one day treat type 1 diabetes using transplants of insulin-producing beta-cells derived from pancreatic progenitors may have just crept a tad closer, if findings by a group of researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) can be verified. The team has identified a cell surface marker on a subpopulation of cells in the pancreas that appears to identify them as pancreatic stem cells (PnSCs), a cell type which has never actually been firmly demonstrated in human or animal tissues.
Current approaches to cell replacement therapy for diabetes involves the transplantation of pancreatic islets, which involves numerous transplant procedures. Although it is feasibly possible to derive insulin-producing cells from either human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) or induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), there are technical issues which have yet to be solved. What is ideally needed is a source of stem cells derived directly from the pancreas that can readily be prompted to differentiate into the desired cell type.
http://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-...-progenitors-identified-in-pancreas/81247218/
Current approaches to cell replacement therapy for diabetes involves the transplantation of pancreatic islets, which involves numerous transplant procedures. Although it is feasibly possible to derive insulin-producing cells from either human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) or induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), there are technical issues which have yet to be solved. What is ideally needed is a source of stem cells derived directly from the pancreas that can readily be prompted to differentiate into the desired cell type.
http://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-...-progenitors-identified-in-pancreas/81247218/