An international team of researchers has successfully reprogrammed human α cells into insulin-producing β cells, according to a study published yesterday (February 13) in Nature.
In the pancreas, these two cell types form clumps called islets that help regulate blood sugar, with insulin from β cells bringing levels down and glucagon from α cells boosting them up. Sure enough, when the researchers put clumps of the reprogrammed α cells into diabetic mice, the animals’ blood-sugar levels came down.
“I think this has got huge potential,” Terence Herbert, a biologist at the University of Lincoln in the UK, tells Nature.
In 2010, Pedro Herrera of the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and colleagues showed that that if β cells were ablated in the pancreases of mice, α cells could take on a β cell–like phenotype and start producing insulin. This change seemed to be controlled in part by two proteins called Pdx1 ...
