EuroStem Conference

Scientists Hacked Human Cells to Make Insulin, And It Reversed Diabetes in Mice

Stem cells from the human stomach can be converted into cells that secrete insulin in response to rising blood sugar levels, offering a promising approach to treating diabetes, according to a preclinical study from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine.

In the study, which appeared April 27 in Nature Cell Biology, the researchers showed that they could take stem cells obtained from human stomach tissue and reprogram them directly—with strikingly high efficiency—into cells that closely resemble pancreatic insulin-secreting cells known as beta cells. Transplants of small groups of these cells reversed disease signs in a mouse model of diabetes.

“This is a proof-of-concept study that gives us a solid foundation for developing a treatment, based on patients’ own cells, for type 1 diabetes and severe type 2 diabetes,” said study senior author Dr. Joe Zhou, a professor of regenerative medicine and a member of the Hartman Institute for Therapeutic Organ Regeneration at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Insulin is a hormone that regulates blood glucose levels—without it, blood glucose becomes too high, causing diabetes and its many complications. An estimated 1.6 million Americans have type 1 diabetes, which results from an autoimmune attack that destroys beta cells in the pancreas. At least several million other Americans lack sufficient beta cells due to severe type 2 diabetes. Current treatments in such cases include manual and wearable-pump injections of insulin, which have multiple drawbacks including pain, potentially inefficient glucose control, and the necessity of wearing cumbersome equipment.

Biomedical researchers aim to replace beta-cell function in a more natural way, with transplants of human cells that work as beta cells do: automatically sensing blood sugar levels and secreting insulin as needed. Ideally, such transplants would use patients’ own cells, to avoid the problem of transplant rejection.

Scientists Target Human Stomach Cells for Diabetes Therapy Stem cells from the human stomach can be converted into cells that secrete insulin in response to rising blood sugar levels, offering a promising approach to treating diabetes.

How what you eat affects the depth of your slumber We know how diet can affect general health, but what effect does it have on sleep specifically? A new study has found that what we eat can directly affect our sleep quality.

Using AI to create better, more potent medicines While it can take years for the pharmaceutical industry to create medicines capable of treating or curing human disease, a new study suggests that using generative artificial intelligence could vastly accelerate the drug-development process.