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This week, scientists at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) reported the first success in generating new populations of insulin-producing cells using skin cells of Type 1 diabetes patients. The achievement involved the newer embryo-free technique for generating stem cells, and marked the first step toward building a treatment that could one day replace a patient's faulty insulin-making cells with healthy, functioning ones. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs...
...experiment, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also provided the first good model - in a petri dish - of how Type 1 diabetes develops, giving scientists a peek at what goes wrong in patients affected by the disease. Such knowledge could lead to not only new stem-cell-based treatments, but also novel drug therapies that might improve the symptoms of the disease. (Read "Study: Stem Cells May Reverse Type 1 Diabetes...
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...
...virus. Such embedding of foreign matter isn't ideal for a treatment designed for the clinic, since changes in the genome could result in a variety of potential problems, including the formation of tumors and uncontrolled cell growth. Melton's group, as well as those in other stem-cell labs around the world, are working to substitute these dangerous genes and viruses with chemicals that might prove safer. (See pictures of the swine flu virus...
...Read "Cautious Optimism for the First Stem-Cell Human Trial...