Stained human pancreatic cells, successfully transplanted into a mouseSAIYONG ZHUA team at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), has successfully created functional pancreatic cells from human skin cells that, when transplanted into immunodeficient mice, prevented the development of diabetes. The results were published yesterday (January 6) in Nature Communications.
“This study represents the first successful creation of human insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells using a direct cellular reprogramming method,” study coauthor Saiyong Zhu of the UCSF Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease said in a press release.
Currently, one of the most widely used approaches to cell reprogramming involves reverting cells to pluripotent stem cells, which can then be used to generate any cell type found in the body. But the method used in this study directly reprograms cells into progenitors—cells that can produce only a limited number of organ-specific cell types.
“This new cellular reprogramming and expansion paradigm is more sustainable and scalable than previous methods,” said coauthor Sheng Ding of the Roddenberry Center for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine in the press release. “Using ...
