A team of researchers from Europe and the US have made insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas of mice. These are the cells that are lost in Type 1 diabetes, and their findings may lead the way for new treatments to be developed. They reported their findings in the journal Cell on Friday.
In Type 1 diabetes, insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas are destroyed by the body's own immune system. Without these cells the body is unable to metabolise sugar, and patients need to inject insulin to compensate. The team of researchers have used mice with Type 1 diabetes to study beta-cells. They were able to re-programme another type of pancreatic cell, alpha cells, by switching on a gene called Pax4. The alpha cells then turned into beta cells and produced insulin in the mice. The therapy worked best on mice under one month old, where it effectively treated their diabetes. It is not yet known whether a similar approach will work in people with Type 1 diabetes.
Turning on the Pax4 gene in the mice caused alpha cells to convert to beta cells, in turn causing more alpha-cells to be produced. These were also converted straight into beta cells. Alpha cells in the pancreas make a hormone called glucagon when blood sugar levels fall too low, causing the liver to release glucose from storage. Further studies are needed to show that the alpha to beta cell conversion can be kept under control, and scientists will need to find a way to turn Pax4 on and then back off again once a sufficient number of beta cells were in place.
'A lot of 'ifs' remain before we will know whether it could be taken to the clinic,' said the study's lead author, Patrick Collombat, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Germany. But for Type 1 diabetes patients who are currently treated with daily insulin injections, he said in a statement, this much is clear: 'We need a better treatment. We need to find a way to regenerate beta cells.'
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