Reprogrammed Skin Cells Bring Promise of Insulin Independence for Diabetics

Diabetes researchers have used sophisticated cell culture techniques to transform skin fibroblasts into pluripotent stem cells, which were then induced to differentiate into insulin producing islet-like cells.

Data gathered over the last several years suggest that islet cell transplantation for patients with type I diabetes holds great promise for achieving insulin independence. However, the extreme shortage of matched organ donors and the necessity for chronic immunosuppressive therapy has made it impossible for this treatment to be used for the general diabetic population.

In the current study, investigators at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, USA) described a method that could allow a patient with diabetes to receive an islet cell transplant originating from his own skin cells without danger of graft rejection.
The investigators based their work on a method developed in Japan for inducing mature cells to return to a pluripotent, stem cell-like state by using "defined factors” (specific proteins that control which genes are active in a cell). Then, using a serum-free protocol, they successfully generated insulin-producing islet-like clusters (ILCs) from the pluripotent cells under feeder-free conditions. The skin fibroblast derived ILCs not only contained C-peptide positive and glucagon positive cells, but also released C-peptide upon glucose stimulation. These findings were published in the September 9, 2008, online edition of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC).

"Not only have we shown that we can reprogram skin cells, but we have also demonstrated that these reprogrammed cells can be differentiated into insulin-producing cells which hold great therapeutic potential for diabetes,” said senior author Dr. Yi Zhang, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of North Carolina.

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