For The First Time, Scientists Turn Human Stem Cells Into Insulin-Producing Cells

Although treatment of type 1 diabetes has come a long way since it was first described in Ancient Egypt, insulin injections and finger pricks are a daily part of life for many diabetics.

But researchers have just made a breakthrough that might one day make these technologies obsolete, by transforming human stem cells into functional insulin-producing cells (also known as beta cells) – at least in mice.

"We can now generate insulin-producing cells that look and act a lot like the pancreatic beta cells you and I have in our bodies," explains one of the team member.

"This is a critical step towards our goal of creating cells that could be transplanted into patients with diabetes."

Type 1 diabetes is characterised by a loss of insulin due to the immune system destroying cells in the pancreas - hence, type 1 diabetics need to introduce their own insulin manually. Although this is a pretty good system, it's not perfect.

People with the condition can live mostly normal lives, but they do have an increased risk of problems such as kidney failure, heart disease, and stroke.

There are other methods of managing type 1 diabetes, such as introducing new beta cells or swapping out the damaged pancreas for a new one, but both of these options have limited availability, as the new cells or organs need to be taken from organ donors.

To get around the donor problem, researchers including the team  has been working on nudging stem cells into becoming fully functional pancreatic beta cells for the last few years, but there have been some issues in getting them all the way there.

"The cells we and others were producing were getting stuck at an immature stage where they weren't able to respond adequately to blood glucose and secrete insulin properly," he said.
"It has been a major bottleneck for the field." 

But when the team looked at the way these cells develop in the pancreas, they struck gold. Here, the cells separate from the rest of the pancreas and arrange themselves into protrusions called pancreatic islets.

The team investigated this process in a petri dish, artificially separating the pancreatic stem cells to reorganise them into the islet-like clusters they naturally form in the body. This arrangement allowed the pancreatic stem cells to mature and function much like regular insulin-producing cells do.

And even better, when these islets were transplanted into healthy mice, they found that the cells produced insulin in response to blood sugar levels in a matter of days.

Of course, as with any mouse study, we can't get too excited just yet - there's still quite a bit of work to be done before this becomes a helpful treatment for humans. For one, if you were to introduce new pancreatic stem cells into a type 1 diabetic, it's likely that the immune system would still destroy them.

This means that anyone undergoing this treatment would have to be on immune suppressors for the rest of their life, an issue that also comes with organ and cell donations.

But this latest step is still a huge step forward, and the team is now working on solving these other problems. For example, they are investigating whether CRISPR can be used to change the stem cells enough that they could fly under the radar of the overactive immune system.

"We're finally able to move forward on a number of different fronts that were previously closed to us," he added. "The possibilities seem endless."

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                    PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO  VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/       
                                                                                                                                                                      FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG-                                                  https:// kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com/           
                                                                           FOR CROCHET DESIGNS                                                                                                                                                                                                  https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com  

Doctors reveal new method to detect cancer cells at its most 'curable' stages

The cure for cancer has taken a giant step forward after the development of a project titled "CancerSEEK." The said project was developed by a medical team.

The principle behind the project is to detect cancer at its most curable stages. This detection is done through a unique blood test that is revealed to be capable of discovering up to eight diseases at once.
Particularly, these eight diseases are ovarian, esophageal, pancreatic, stomach, liver, breast, colorectal, and lung cancers. These were all in the report published in the journal.
 
The blood tests are unique due to its ability to detect mutated genes in the DNA of the person. The test checks the status of eight proteins along with the 16 genes in detecting cancer.

By detecting mutated genes early, researchers believe that they can formulate several strategies in combating and curing the cancer cells. So, while not exactly a quick cure for cancer, CancerSEEK prevents and cures it more efficiently compared to previous methods.

"This field of early detection is critical. I think this can have an enormous impact on cancer mortality. The earlier a cancer is found, the greater the chance of being able to treat it," said a cancer specialist.

CancerSEEK was tested on an estimate of 1,000 cancer patients. It is to be noted that the cancer patients who were tested were not in the grave stages where the cancer had already spread to other tissues.

According to the researchers' findings, 70 percent of the results were accurate, detecting cancer cells of all sorts from their list. Despite the high success rate, the team  has not released it publicly yet.

However, the research team gave an estimate of how much it could possibly cost, which is around $500 — cheaper or similar in price when compared with conventional methods for detecting cancer.

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.    

PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO VIEW MY BLOG-                      
HTTP:GSEASYRECIPES.BLOGSPOT.COM/

FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG-                                                     

HTTP://KNEE REPLACEMENT-STICK CLUB.BLOGSPOT.COM/
FOR CROCHET DESIGNS
HTTP://MY CROCHET CREATIONS.BLOGSPOT.COM

Newly found ‘insulin-producing’ pancreatic cells offer hope to diabetics

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.






PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO VIEW MY BLOG-
HTTP:GSEASYRECIPES.BLOGSPOT.COM      

FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG

HTTP://KNEE REPLACEMENT-STICK CLUB.BLOGSPOT.COM/

FOR CROCHET DESIGNS- http://My Crochet Creations.blogspot.com/

 

 

A team of researchers has found potential source of insulin-producing cells in the adult human pancreas, offering new hope to diabetics.
Cells that express neurogenin 3 (NGN3) may one day be harnessed to create a plentiful supply of insulin-producing beta cells for the treatment of diabetes, the University of South Florida study suggests.
NGN3 is the master gene driving development of the human endocrine pancreas, including the beta cells that make and secrete the hormone insulin, which helps control blood sugar levels. In type 1, or juvenile, diabetes, insulin-producing beta cells are destroyed by the person’s immune system, and patients need insulin injections to survive. Patients with the more common type 2 diabetes, referred to as adult-onset diabetes, produce insulin but their bodies cannot use it properly, and they often require extra insulin.
In the study, researchers from the Children’s Research Institute, USF Health Morsani College of Medicine; Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; and the University of Illinois at Chicago, detected the NGN3 protein in histologically normal pancreatic biopsies from two sources-cadavers and patients requiring biopsy for diagnostic purposes.
NGN3 expression in the adult pancreas was unexpected, because it cannot be detected in the adult rodent pancreas – only during fetal development, said principal investigator Michael Shamblott.
Now that researchers know these NGN3 cells are a normal part of adult human pancreas biology, they can learn to increase them and to coax them towards becoming differentiated pancreatic endocrine cells by using specific drugs, Shamblott noted, adding that the goal is to regenerate functional beta cells that can cure diabetes.
The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Human stem cells converted to functional lung cells

Scientists have for the first time transformed human stem cells into functional lung and airway cells.

The advance, by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers, has significant potential for modelling lung disease, screening drugs, studying human lung development, and, ultimately, generating lung tissue for transplantation.

“Researchers have had relative success in turning human stem cells into heart cells, pancreatic beta cells, intestinal cells, liver cells, and nerve cells, raising all sorts of possibilities for regenerative medicine,” said study leader Hans-Willem Snoeck.

“Now, we are finally able to make lung and airway cells. This is important because lung transplants have a particularly poor prognosis,” said Snoeck, professor of medicine (in microbiology & immunology) and affiliated with the Columbia Center for Translational Immunology and the Columbia Stem Cell Initiative.

“Although any clinical application is still many years away, we can begin thinking about making autologous lung transplants – that is, transplants that use a patient’s own skin cells to generate functional lung tissue,” Snoeck said.

The research builds on Snoeck’s 2011 discovery of a set of chemical factors that can turn human embryonic stem (ES) cells or human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into anterior foregut endoderm – precursors of lung and airway cells.

In the current study, Snoeck and his colleagues found new factors that can complete the transformation of human ES or iPS cells into functional lung epithelial cells (cells that cover the lung surface).

The resultant cells were found to express markers of at least six types of lung and airway epithelial cells, particularly markers of type 2 alveolar epithelial cells.

Type 2 cells are important because they produce surfactant, a substance critical to maintain the lung alveoli, where gas exchange takes place; they also participate in repair of the lung after injury and damage.

The findings have implications for the study of a number of lung diseases, including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), in which type 2 alveolar epithelial cells are thought to play a central role.

“No one knows what causes the disease, and there’s no way to treat it,” said Snoeck.

“Using this technology, researchers will finally be able to create laboratory models of IPF, study the disease at the molecular level, and screen drugs for possible treatments or cures,” Snoeck said.

The study was published in the journal Nature Biotechnology. 

ps- this is only for information, always consult you physician before having any particular food/ medication/exercise/other remedies.

ps- those interested in recipes are free to view my blog-

http://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/

for info about knee replacement, you can view my blog-

http://Knee replacement-stick club.blogspot.com/

for crochet designs

http://My Crochet Creations.blogspot.com