Stem cells used to make pancreas, gut cells
Stem cells can be transformed into the pancreatic cells needed to treat diabetes and into complex layers of intestinal tissue, scientists demonstrated in two experiments recently. In one, a team turned immature sperm cells into pancreatic tissue, while another team turned embryonic stem cells into complex layers of intestinal tissue. Both studies show new ways to use stem cells, which are the body's master cells and which can come from a variety of sources. A team at Georgetown University in Washington worked with spermatogonial stem cells, master cells that give rise to sperm in men. When transplanted into diabetic mice, these cells produced insulin, acting like the pancreatic beta cells that the body mistakenly destroys in type-1 diabetes, Gallicano's team told a meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in Philadelphia. Currently, children and young adults diagnosed with type-1 diabetes must take insulin for life. Gallicano said men's own cells could be used as a source of their transplants, and he said perhaps the approach may work in women too. Separately, James Wells and colleagues at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center in Ohio turned two different kinds of stem cell into complex layers of intestinal tissue.
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