Stem Cells Finally Found in Pancreas

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter
Thursday, January 24, 2008; 1:00 PM

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THURSDAY, Jan. 24 (HealthDay News) -- An international team of researchers has finally managed to locate stem cells in the pancreas -- in mice, at least.

If the findings are confirmed in humans, they could pave the way for dramatic new therapies for diabetes, namely the regeneration of beta cells so the body could once again produce its own insulin. Until now, scientists had all but abandoned hopes that the pancreas made its own stem cells because they had failed to find evidence to support the theory.

But any clinical advances from the new research are still a long way off, experts cautioned.

"This is the first conclusive evidence that there are stem cells in the pancreas, but any potential benefit is a very long way away," said Juan Dominguez-Bendala, director of Stem Cell Development for Translational Research at the Diabetes Research Institute of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

"If this kind of cell and their progenitors with a capacity to divide exist in the pancreas of man, and if we can identify the factors that are responsible to induce their proliferation and differentiation, then these latter processes might be stimulated in vitro but also, by noninvasive means, in vivo," said senior study author Harry Heimberg, an associate professor at the Diabetes Research Center of Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium.

The findings are published in the Jan. 25 issue of the journal Cell.

Diabetes is primarily a failing of the pancreatic beta cells to produce insulin. Beta cells are one of several types of cells making up clusters of cells called the islets of Langerhans.

Insulin is a hormone that moves blood sugar from the bloodstream to the cells, where it is used as energy.

In type 1 diabetes, the pancreas has lost all or virtually all of its ability to produce insulin. In type 2 diabetes, the loss of beta cells is more gradual.

Islet-cell transplantation, in which islets are transferred from one person to another, is performed today but is limited in scope because of a shortage of donors, according to the study.