Diabetic Men May Be Able To Grow Their Own Insulin-Producing Cells

An anonymous reader writes "Men with type 1 diabetes may be able to grow their own insulin-producing cells from their testicular tissue, say Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) researchers who presented their findings today at the American Society of Cell Biology 50th annual meeting in Philadelphia. Their laboratory and animal study is a proof of principle that human spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) extracted from testicular tissue can morph into insulin-secreting beta islet cells normally found in the pancreas. And the researchers say they accomplished this feat without use of any of the extra genes now employed in most labs to turn adult stem cells into a tissue of choice."

Re:Temporary solution?

[wood_dude]

As sombody with Type 1, this is indeed the problem with most 'fixes' for the problem. You have to stop the transplanted cells from being destroyed again. There was somthing call 'pig sushi' that I heard about a while ago, that had pig Beta cells wrapped in an coating that stopped the immune system from getting at them. I havn't heard any more on that, but it did tackle the problem head on. Chris

Some clarification...

[Guidii]

Okay, so I read TFA. As a diabetic, I had to. Hope I don't get kicked off slashdot.

Some key points: They took spermatogonial stem cells (SSC's) from testicular tissue of deceased organ donors (not from diabetic patients) and observed that some of these cells would turn into insulin producing beta cells in a test tube. They injected these cells into mice, and found that the mice had reduced glucose levels for a week.

This is pretty exciting news, since the alternative source of beta cells is to extract them from the pancreas of deceased organ donors. (This was done in the Edmonton Protocol [slashdot.org].)