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Wednesday, January 29, 2003A study using frogs hints that one day portions of diabetics' livers might be converted into pancreas tissue in the lab to restore healthy, insulin-producing cells, so that their bodies can store nutrients properly. UK researchers have made tadpoles grow pancreas tissue from their liver cells, and turned human liver cells into pancreas cells in the lab1. ...During embryo development, liver and pancreas cells grow from similar, adjacent tissues. In mice and humans the gene Pdx1 is essential for a pancreas to form. It codes for a protein that directs others in the cell - in a sense it gives the cell its identity. "We thought if we can find the master-switch gene for pancreas and somehow deliver it to liver cells, we could transdifferentiate liver into pancreas," Horb explains. So they put activated Pdx1 into frog embryos. Liver cells that had the gene converted into pancreas. In some tadpoles the whole liver was converted; in others just a few cells switched. Now, if they can just figure out if the effect lasts more than a few weeks, if it works in the human body, if they can control the amount of insulin and amylase the new cells produce so as not to overdose a person, and if the gene doesn't turn the cells into self-reproducing cancer cells, then this might work as a treatment for diabetics. Someday. posted by Sydney on 1/29/2003 06:28:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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