A discovery at McGill University offers new hope for 171 million people in the world with diabetes.
It all has to do with cell clusters called islets of Langerhans, which, when destroyed or dysfunctional, prevent the pancreas from making enough insulin. Researchers know that the pancreas does continue to produce exocrine cells which can transform to become islet cells and begin secreting insulin.
The goal is to find a way to activate the transformation, but the genes involved are not yet completely known. However, now that it's known that certain genes are crucial in the production of insulin, the door is open to finding a cure through gene therapy that will create new islets out of cells from the rest of the pancreas, said researcher C. Polychronakos of the McGill Endocrine Genetics Lab. The work will soon be published in the journal, Nature.
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