Word: melton
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...These cells represent the newest model of diabetes for humans," says Melton. "We have a lot of good models of Type 1 diabetes in the mouse, but everything that we have learned from them has failed in the clinic. Now we have a chance at figuring out how humans get the disease...
...Douglas Melton, co-director of HSCI, and his team took skin cells from two Type 1 diabetes patients, exposed the cells to a cocktail of three genes that converted them back to an embryonic state - which are referred to as pluripotent stem cells - then instructed the newly reborn cells to grow into beta cells, the cells in the pancreas that secrete insulin. In Type 1 diabetes, these beta cells no longer work to break down the glucose that floods the body after each meal, leading to blood-sugar spikes that can damage the kidneys and heart...
...test whether their lab-made cells could function like normal beta cells, Melton's group exposed them to glucose in a dish. When sugar levels were high, the cells produced more of a protein that beta cells release when they break down sugar; when glucose levels were low, the protein levels were low as well. (See pictures from an X-ray studio...
...immune reaction gone awry - immune cells are "trained" in the thymus gland to recognize the body's own cells and protect them from destruction. For some reason, this education doesn't occur properly in Type 1 diabetes patients, and the immune system sees the pancreatic beta cells as foreign. Melton's team is currently working to generate thymus cells from diabetic patients in the same way the team created the beta cells, in order to put all the players together in a lab dish, in a kind of biological diorama of the disease. (See more from TIME on diabetes...
...opted to use existing lab space in Cambridge to accommodate the researchers.Planners ultimately chose the Fairchild Building, a roughly 30-year-old laboratory complex built specifically for biochemistry research that was even planned by a few of the current occupants.The labs of two acclaimed stem cell researchers, Douglas A. Melton and Kevin C. Eggan, are already in the building, but the University revealed in February that the entire structure would have to be vacated and completely renovated to make room for their stem cell colleagues. Faust said the new labs would be ready by 2011—precisely when...