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Scientists Coax Blood Cells to Produce Insulin
Hindustan Times
05 April 2005
Indo-Asian News Service
New York, April 5 -- Scientists are conducting experiments to get white blood cells to produce insulin - a medical breakthrough, they say, may help find a cure for diabetes.
A team at the Institute of Bioengineering in Alicante, Spain, has managed to obtain insulin-producing embryonic stem cells (ESC) from mice, reports New Scientist. The scientists are now working with humans.
Bernat Soria, chairman of the European Stem Cell Network and the scientist spearheading the research, says conditions were created to coax white blood cells to produce insulin.
When the transformed cells were injected into diabetic mice, their blood sugar levels returned to normal. After a week, the effect disappeared because the mice's immune system destroyed the human cells.
The next step is to find out if insulin-producing white blood cells can be derived from people with diabetes so that they will be stable after re-implantation. One great advantage of the approach, scientists said, is that white blood cells are very easy to obtain.
Juvenile onset of diabetes is caused by the immune system destroying the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. It can now be treated by transplanting beta cells taken from cadavers through a technique called Edmonton protocol.
But recipients have been known to suffer from side effects because of the drugs they need to take to prevent their immune systems from rejecting foreign cells. Also the supply of beta cells is limited - only 500 people have been treated so far.
Several other teams have managed to derive insulin-producing cells from human ESCs. While this might end the shortage of beta cells for transplantation, it is not a perfect solution because obtaining matching cells might not be possible for every individual and immuno-suppressant drugs will still be needed.
Even if the beta cells were a perfect match, without drugs they might still be destroyed by the same autoimmune reaction that killed the patients' original beta cells, say scientists.
Regarding making white blood cells produce insulin, Chris Burns of King's College, London, who studies beta cells, says it is not clear whether the insulin-producing cells actually transform themselves into beta cells or another cell type to produce the hormone.
This does not matter as long as the cells produce normal insulin in response to rising blood sugar levels. "If this is the case, it would be a significant advance," he says.
Published by HT Media Ltd. with permission from Indo-Asian News Service.
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