A team of Argentine doctors made pancreas cells again to produce insulin, which constitutes a key advance for the treatment of diabetes.
From stem cells from fat, experts created “Langerhans islets”, cluster cells of the pancreas, and reconstituted their insulin producing function and its complementary hormone, glucagon.
Diabetes is generated when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin or the body cannot use it effectively.The discovery was conducted by the Research Center in Fabric and Cell Therapies Engineering of the Maimonides University of Buenos Aires, dedicated to organ reconstruction to replace those that are missing or supply those who have some insufficiency.
The director, Gustavo Moviglia, explains that the importance of this achievement lies mainly that all the elements at stake can be obtained from the same patient who will be treated, thus complications or rejections derived from the transplants can be avoided ”which currently currentlyThey are practiced.
The investigation of the Argentines was based on the knowledge that a type of white blood cells, the lymphocytes, maintains certain characteristics of the layer that, when the human being is still an embryo, allows the development of the different organs and that aInflammatory process is directly related to repair and tissue regeneration.
The discovery consisted of seeing that a cell with inflammatory activity during the repair of an organ, if it is placed with a stem cell, makes it mature with the characteristics of the organ ."We put lymphocytes that favored inflammation in the pancreas, all from the same individual, facing a group of stem cells, and these began to differentiate themselves in line with that organ," explains Moviglia.
The next step was to know if adult stem cells from the same individual could be obtained, with two options: the ones from the bone marrow and those of the fat.The researchers concluded that the latter respond better to treatment. "In five days the cells had already been transformed and were actively producing insulin" .
According to the researcher, this speed is essential to allow massive treatment in the future, since currently organ generation models have a production period of three to six weeks.
”They have to be done within a very special environment, with very high costs.Time we save is time that is saved in costs and gives us the possibility that the treatment can become massive, ”he adds.
Until now, the only alternatives are cell treatments from bodies or pigs and the patient must undergo a medication regime so as not to reject the transplant.But the islet, which usually renews by itself, cannot be regenerated if it is so protected with drugs and has a limited duration, so the treatment, which in the United States exceeds even $ 300,000, must be repeated every two years, a problemthat would be solved if generated with elements of the individual.
Buenos Aires (EFE).
