Excerpt
Surgeons from Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, are reporting on a whole new strategy for controlling insulin dependent diabetes without daily injections of insulin. The surgeons have bio-engineered a novel matrix that serves as a scaffold for seeding supportive stem cells as well as pancreatic islets (the cells that produce insulin in the pancreas).
In a proof-of-concept study presented at the 2010 Annual Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons, the researchers note that the matrix not only helps to understand the micro-architecture of the pancreas, but also prolongs the survival and preserves the function of the islets. Islets survived longer in the bio-artificial matrix than in conventional transplantation sites, and they produced significantly more insulin when challenged with glucose. "Islet cell transplantation is the only treatment of insulin dependent diabetes that can consistently establish insulin independence. However, islets only feel at home in the pancreatic niche, and therefore their survival and ability to produce insulin declines rapidly if transplanted, for example, in the liver" according to Claudius Conrad, MD, PhD, primary investigator and chief resident in surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. "The pancreas provides a very special environment for islets," he explained. "By default, the survival and function of the islet cells will always be worse in any organ other than the pancreas. To engineer an endocrine pancreas, islet- and stem cells require an extracellular matrix (ECM) that provides specific architecture, microstructure, and most importantly microvasculature to form the islet cell specific niche," he said.
Bold emphasis mine
One step closer to a cure for diabetes (which I have).
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