Summary

Original source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/4046257.stm

Details

• US scientists believe they have made a discovery which could mean a cure for more diabetic patients in the future.
• Some patients have already been cured by islet cell transplants, but a major obstacle is a shortage of donor pancreases to harvest the cells from.
• They told the online edition of Science that they used a serum derived from cows to help in their reproduction.
• People with Type 1 diabetes need to inject insulin to keep their blood sugar under control.
• This is because the islet cells in their pancreas, whose job it is to make insulin, have been destroyed.
• Replacing the loss with islet cells from donors can cure the condition.
• However, a large number of islet cells are needed and there are too few donors to meet demand.
• Stem cells - very primitive cells that have the capability to become any cell in the body - have offered some hope, but again it is difficult to produce enough islet cells from stem cells.
• Dr Marvin Gershengorn and colleagues at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Kidney Diseases looked at a way of solving this problem.
• This serum, derived from cows, appeared to encourage the islet cells to change into more primitive cells that were the predecessors of islet cells.
• This means it is possible to get large numbers of hIPCs in a relatively short time period - almost a billion-fold increase in 90 days.
• They are different from stem cells because they are more developed and can only go on to become islet-like cells, which they did in the US trials.
• Jo Brodie, islet project co-ordinator at Diabetes UK, said: "This research is useful in helping us to understand the process involved in islet development and could lead to advances in islet cell transplants for people with Type 1 diabetes.

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