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Adult Stem Cells Offer Hope for Diabetes Treatment

By Gudrun Schultz

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, November 13, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Adult stem cells may soon be used to treat human diabetes, after a study by U.S. researchers showed the cells increased insulin production in mice with Type 2 diabetes, and may also have aided in kidney repair.

Researchers at the Tulane University in New Orleans injected human stem cells, taken from bone marrow samples obtained from adult donors, into diabetic mice with high blood sugar levels and kidney damage.

Tests after three weeks showed the mice who received the human stem cells had lowered blood sugar levels. The researchers found that the stem cells had traveled to each mouse’s pancreas and repaired insulin-producing tissues. The tissue produced mouse insulin, not human insulin, showing that the cells were highly adaptable to tissues in need of repair, Tulane University Magazine reported.

As well, the mice also showed evidence of some kidney repair, indicating the stem cells were capable of repairing damaged kidney tissue.

“We are not certain whether the kidneys improved because the blood sugar was lower or because the human cells were helping to repair the kidneys,” Dr. Darwin Prockop lead author of the study and director of the Tulane Center for Gene Therapy, told BBC News.

“But we suspect the human cells were repairing the kidneys in much the same way they were repairing the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.”

“The results provide new hope for treating diabetes and the severe effects it has on may organs,” said Dr. Prockop. Using human cells in preliminary studies on mice provides significant evidence that the therapy may be effective in treating human patients.

The research team hopes to collaborate with Tulane endocrinologist Vivian Fonseca in developing a clinical trial to test the therapy on humans with diabetes.

“The physicians will be selecting patients with diabetes whose kidneys are beginning to fail,” Dr. Prockop said. “They will determine whether giving the patients large numbers of their own adult stem cells will lower blood sugar, increase secretion of insulin from the pancreas and improve the function of the kidney.”

The study was published online this week in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.

Read study published in PNAS:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0608249103v1
See related LifeSiteNews coverage:

Human Liver Grown from Cord Blood Stem Cells--Media Ignores UK Breakthrough
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/nov/06110105.html

Adult Stem Cells Used to Treat Emergency Heart Attack Patients
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/nov/06110809.html

Success Stories with Adult Stem Cells Coming in Almost Too Fast to Track
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jan/05012007.html

Adult Stem Cells used to Cure Blindness
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/apr/05042907.html

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