Tag : Stomach

New York: A potential strategy for treating diabetes uses stem cells from the human stomach to create cells that release insulin in response to rising blood sugar levels. According to a preliminary study conducted by Weill Cornell Medicine researchers and their work which was published on April 27 in Nature Cell Biology, the researchers demonstrated that they could directly reprogram stem cells isolated from human stomach tissue into cells that closely resemble beta cells, the pancreatic insulin-secreting cells. In a rat model of diabetes, transplants of tiny clusters of these cells restored disease symptoms. This is a proof-of-concept study that gives us a solid foundation for developing a treatment, based on patients' own cells, for type 1 diabetes and severe type 2 diabetes," said study senior author Dr. Joe Zhou, a professor of regenerative medicine and a member of the Hartman Institute for Therapeutic Organ Regeneration at Weill Cornell Medicine. Insulin is a hormone that regulates blood glucose levels--without it, blood glucose becomes too high, causing diabetes and its many complications. An estimated 1.6 million Americans have type 1 diabetes, which results from an autoimmune attack that destroys beta cells in the pancreas. At least several million other Americans lack sufficient beta cells due to severe type 2 diabetes. Current treatments in such cases include manual and wearable-pump injections of insulin, which have multiple drawbacks including pain, potentially inefficient glucose control, and the necessity of wearing cumbersome equipment. Biomedical researchers aim to replace beta-cell function in a more natural way, with transplants of human cells that work as beta cells do: automatically sensing blood sugar levels an ...