We are one step closer to converting pancreatic islet transplants into a functional therapy against type 1 diabetes

The incidence of Type 1 diabetes It is less than that of its “sister”, but the World Health Organization esteem that more than 64 million people suffer only in Europe. In Spain, the number of cases exceeds 166,000 according to estimates of the National Health System.

A new path. A study led by researchers from the University of Leiden has presented a new production method of endocrine cell groupings for transplantation. This tool could help us advance in this type of treatments against type 1 diabetes.

Pancreatic islets. The work focuses on the pancreatic islet transplant. These islets are “groupings” of endocrine cells, hormone producing cells. Type 1 diabetes is triggered when our own immune system attacks pancreatic beta cells, insulin producing cells.

The problem of transplanting these islets is to obtain them. An option is to obtain them from deceased donors, but this limits their availability. Another option is to “cultivate them” in laboratory from induced pluripotent stem cells.

Easier to say than to do. However, there is a problem to solve, and these stem cells can differentiate themselves in the endocrine cells we are looking for, but they can also differentiate in other cells. “This is a problem because if you want to generate a reliable and safe product we need to be very pure, and that it does not vary in composition or purity from one lot to another,” explained to Sinc Adrián Villalba, an immunologist who works precisely in the development of this type of islets.

A new method. In the new work, the team raises a new mechanism that facilitates the process of purifying unwanted cells without harming the integrity of the islets to be transplanted. The mechanism is based on density gradient centrifugation, used to enrich endocrine cell clusters and reduce the number of unwanted cells.

The team tested their method successfully in mice. They observed that the transplanted islets remained viable for a period of six months. The details of the study were published In an article In the magazine Translational Medicine Science.

A future still distant. Animals in animals are a key step, but it remains to be determined to what extent we can replicate the success of these first experiments in human cells. The success achieved so much in alive as In vitrothey point to optimism for now, but there is still time until we can see this progress turned into therapy.

The team stands out in your work that this is a “fast” and “scalable method to large volumes of cells.” A method that can also be applied to cellular “manufacturing.” They also indicate the possibility of applying this method to contribute to the creation of new and improved cells based on cells in regenerative medicine, “beyond the field of islets (stem cells).”

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Image | ISENS USA / Jakob Suckale