Human GI Cells Retrained to Produce Insulin
I don't post nearly all of the stories that I read about cure research, but I found this one to be particularly interesting and wanted to pass it on.
Human gastrointestinal cells from patients were engineered to express insulin (fluorescent green) in the lab. (Image by Columbia University Medical Center.)
Excerpts from a Columbia University Medical Center press release:
By switching off a single gene, scientists at Columbia University’s Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center have converted human gastrointestinal cells into insulin-producing cells, demonstrating in principle that a drug could retrain cells inside a person’s GI tract to produce insulin.
The finding raises the possibility that cells lost in type 1 diabetes may be more easily replaced through the reeducation of existing cells than through the transplantation of new cells created from embryonic or adult stem cells.
After seven days, some of the cells started releasing insulin and, equally important, only in response to glucose.
You can read the entire press release here