Jo’s Cafe

From ABC Health News via Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Insulin is produced by islet cells in the pancreas, but scientists have been able to persuade adult liver cells to do the same thing. Moreover, insulin production goes up in response to glucose levels, mimicking what happens in the body.

People with diabetes have been cured with transplants of islet cells, but donor islet cells are scarce. The possibility of using a person’s own liver cells instead “may overcome the shortage in tissue availability from cadaver donors and the need for lifelong immune suppression,” Dr. Sarah Ferber told Reuters Health.

Ferber, from The Endocrine Institute in Tel-Hashomer, Israel, and colleagues took a gene, PDX-1, that’s active in the pancreas and duodenum and transferred it to human liver cells, using a virus to carry the gene into the cells.

As many as half the infected adult and fetal liver cells became able to store and secrete insulin, the team reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Early Edition.

Fingers and toes are crossed in this household.