Drug News
Harvard scientists discovered new therapy to treat diabetes
By Sue Mueller
Aug 27, 2008 - 2:43:51 PM

If you like the article, could you please do us a favor? Just tell Google News Services that you like foodconsumer.org included in Google News Services. Inclusion in googlenewsservices means many more people can read articles like this. Thanks.
------

Wednesday August 27, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) -- Forget about stem cells research! Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital in Boston have found a way for them to bypass stem cells to make special cells directly from adult cells, according to a study report released in the journal Nature.

Specifically, the researchers were able to turn adult cells into insulin producing beta cells, which is what type 1 diabetes patients need to produce insulin and metabolize blood sugar.

The study was conducted on living mice though. Diabetic mice receiving the induced beta cells artificially made by the researchers improved their blood levels.

"These cells are very stable and live for the life of the mouse," Dr. Douglas Melton,coauthor of the study was quoted by Reuters as saying.

The technique used is called direct reprogramming which bypasses the need for stem cells to make functional cells or tissue or organs.

Dr. Melton said it is possible to use abundant human cells like liver, skin or fat cells to regenerate functional cells.

Last year, it was discovered that ordinary skin cells can be reprogrammed to turning them into an embryonic-like state. These induced stem cells may then be used to study or treat disease in the future.

But the researchers of the current study did not even need to convert the adult cells into stem cells. They directly converted adult cells into insulin producing beta cells in diabetes mice.

Research on stem cells is controversial and sources are limited. The U.S. government does not allow federal funding for stem cells research due to some ethnic and moral concerns.

For the study, Dr. Melton and colleagues went through thousands of genes and identified three genes Ngn3, Pdx1, and Mafa that are active when the pancreas is developed. They inserted them into ordinary cold virus - an adenovirus, which carried these three genes into the exocrine cells of the pancreas.

As a result, they were able to convert about 20 percent of the exocrine cells to beta cells that produced insulin and diabetic mice that received the induced cells lowered blood sugar levels.

Dr. Melton was cited as saying that this method could be used in humans with severe type 2 diabetes.