In addition to taking drugs to promote insulin secretion or supplementing insulin to treat diabetes, scientists are also committed to studying the differentiation of stem cells into pancreatic islet cells that can secrete insulin. If successful, there would be a permanent treatment option that would eliminate the need for long-term reliance on medications to control blood sugar.
University of alberta, canada(University of Alberta)The team developed new technology to successfully improve the efficiency of differentiating islet cells from patient stem cells. The results were published in the journal Stem Cell Report in November.
When researchers induced pancreatic stem cells to differentiate into islet cells, they added an anti-cancer drug code-named AT7867. As a result, 90% of the stem cells successfully differentiated into target cells, which was a 50% increase compared with the previous flow. After the induced islet cells are transplanted into mice, blood sugar can be controlled normally without the need for insulin injections. Although AT7867 has not yet been clinically used as a cancer drug, it has the opportunity to help treat diabetes patients. This was probably unexpected by the scientists who originally developed the drug.
Islet cell transplantation is more in line with human needs than insulin injection, and has the potential to cure type 1 diabetes (the pancreas loses the islet cells that secrete insulin). Currently, islet cell transplantation requires a donor to provide pancreatic cells that can be implanted into the patient. Many universities abroad have implemented this therapy, and the University of Alberta in Canada is the most famous. In 2000, it achieved a 100% success rate after transplantation for seven diabetic patients. However, donors are limited, and immune rejection failure may still occur, so the number of patients lucky enough to receive this type of treatment is quite limited.
“We need stem cell solutions to obtain more sources of transplantable cells,” said Professor James Shapiro, Canada Research Chair in Transplantation Surgery and Regenerative Medicine. Not only are the sources of islet cells from current donors limited, they may also be rejected and the patient may need to take anti-rejection drugs for life.
If the stem cells come from the patient himself, there is no need to wait for a long time for a donor, and the differentiated islet cells will not be rejected after transplantation, which is safer.Reliable therapy. However, the team reminded that safety and effectiveness still need to be rigorously verified, and there is still a long way to go.
(First image source: shutterstock)
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