Flab could hold the answer to curing diabetes after scientists discovered that stem cells harvested from excess body fat could be programmed to produce insulin.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Britain suffer from diabetes, an autoimmune disease that occurs when the immune system starts attacking insulin–producing beta cells which remove excess sugar from the blood. The obesity crisis has also led to many more people developing Type 2 diabetes.
Scientists in Switzerland have shown it is possible to take stem cells from the body fat of a 50-year-old man and coax them turning into insulin-making beta cells by adding genetic code.
The code triggers the same processes that would take place in the pancreas — where beta cells are produced — and takes just four days to complete.
The next step would be to transplant the beta cells back into a diabetic, where it is hoped they will begin to clear out sugar as normal. Researchers are keen to begin human trials within as little as five years. If successful it could end the need for daily injections of insulin. “Most people have an overabundance of fat from which these stem cells can be harvested,” said researcher Martin Fussenegger, Prof of Biotechnology and Bioengineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
“We used liposuction to remove the fat which holds quite a lot of stem cells, though you don’t actually need to take that much.”
Beta cell transplants are already used to treat diabetes but they usually require drugs to suppress the immune system to prevent rejection. However, because the new lab grown cells would be derived from the patient’s own stem cells there would be no need for debilitating immunosuppressant drugs.
“With our beta cells, there would likely be no need for this action, since we can make them using endogenous cell material taken from the patient’s own body,” added Prof. Fussenegger.
“This is why our work is of such interest in the treatment of diabetes.” To make the beta cells, researchers took the fat stem cells and added genetic ‘software’ which programmed stem cells to manufacture three growth proteins needed to form mature insulin-producing cells.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
