SCIENCE NEWS - Insulin-producing cells can renegerate

Researchers from the University of Geneva in Switzerland have published a report in Nature on April 4 saying that Alpha cells in the pancreas can spontaneously transform into insulin-producing beta cells. The study, done in mice, is the first to reveal the pancreas’s ability to regenerate missing cells. Scientists were surprised to find that new beta cells arose from alpha cells in the pancreas, rather than stem cells.

If the discovery translates to people, scientists may one day be able to coax type 1 diabetics’ own alpha cells into replacing insulin-producing cells. Type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes, results when the immune system destroys beta cells in the pancreas. People with the disease must take lifelong injections of insulin in order to keep blood sugar levels from rising too high.

Even if human pancreases can perform the alpha to beta conversion, the immune system in type 1 diabetics would kill the newly transformed cells unless researchers could figure out how to stop the immune system attack and reduce inflammation in the pancreas that accompanies diabetes. Efforts to control the immune system could give the pancreases of type 1 diabetic patients a chance to recover at least some function. “The life of diabetics would change even if the pancreas is only able to produce 1 or 2 percent of normal insulin levels,” say researchers.

The team is now trying to determine if older mice retain the regenerative capacity seen in the young mice used in the study and which signal tells alpha cells to begin transforming into beta cells.

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