Harvard Breakthrough Grows Insulin-Control Cells in Bulk

Harvard University researchers have pioneered a technique to grow by the billions the insulin-producing cells people with diabetes lack, a breakthrough that may create new ways to treat the disease.

The breakthrough comes after 15 years of seeking a bulk recipe for making beta cells, which sense the level of sugar in the blood and keep it in a healthy range by making precise amounts of insulin, according to Harvard scientists led by Douglas Melton, who published their work today in the journal Cell. The process begins with human stem cells, which have the ability to become any type of tissue or organ.

The technique is an important step toward understanding and treating diabetes, a condition in which the pancreass beta cells are insufficient or dead. Diabetes affects 347 million people worldwide, and its chronic high blood sugar levels can injure hearts, eyes, kidneys, the nervous system and other tissues.

This is part of the holy grail of regenerative medicine or tissue engineering, trying to make an unlimited source of cells or tissues or organs that you can use in a patient to correct a disease, said Albert Hwa, director of discovery science at JDRF, a New York-based diabetes advocacy group that funded Meltons work.

Human stem cell derived beta cells that have formed islet-like clusters in a mouse. Cells were transplanted to the kidney capsule and photo was taken two weeks later by which time the beta cells were making insulin and had cured the diabetes in the mouse. Close

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Human stem cell derived beta cells that have formed islet-like clusters in a mouse. Cells were transplanted to the kidney capsule and photo was taken two weeks later by which time the beta cells were making insulin and had cured the diabetes in the mouse.

The procedure for making mature, insulin-secreting beta cells has taken years of painstaking research that led to a 30-day, six-step recipe, Melton said. Laboratories will be able to use the cells to test drugs and learn more about how diabetes occurs, he said.

They had to go through an awful lot of trial and error to get to this, said Jeanne Loring, director of the Scripps Research Institutess Center for Regenerative Medicine in La Jolla, California. The proof will be in how well this protocol works for people in other laboratories.

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Harvard Breakthrough Grows Insulin-Control Cells in Bulk