A new approach to treating type I diabetes? Gut cells transformed into insulin factories
Date: 13.3.2012
A study by Columbia researchers suggests that cells in the patient's intestine could be coaxed into making insulin, circumventing the need for a stem cell transplant. Until now, stem cell transplants have been seen by many researchers as the ideal way to replace cells lost in type I diabetes and to free patients from insulin injections.
The studyshows that certain progenitor cells in the intestine of mice have the surprising ability to make insulin-producing cells. Drs. Talchai and Accili found that when they turned off a gene known to play a role in cell fate decisions-Foxo1-the progenitor cells also generated insulin-producing cells. More cells were generated when Foxo1 was turned off early in development, but insulin-producing cells were also generated when the gene was turned off after the mice had reached adulthood.
