Diabetes Cured in Mice, 100% success rate in this study. Everymouse treated was cured.]

[Guest guest]

Dan Kelley wrote:

 

Regarding the below article I recommend some activism to put this

stuff in the media and to make your "representatives" aware, you're

aware of such medical advances. If 2 million and a few months was

enough to cure 7 mice, why's it going to take 10 years to treat ANY

humans?

Checkout the Policy Analysis Poetry link at http://gzzz.g3z.com for more exciting

medical technology research.

The article below can be found at: http://www.napa.ufl.edu/2004news/stemcelldiabetes.htm

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STEM CELL RESEARCHERS SUCCESSFULLY TREAT DIABETES IN MICE BY COAXING

CELLS TO CHANGE

March

22, 2004

Contact Information

 

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- University of Florida

adult stem cell experts have restored normal blood sugar levels in

diabetic mice for three months by chemically coaxing bone marrow cells

to produce insulin, a hormone normally made in the pancreas.

The findings, reported today in the online

edition of the journal Laboratory Investigation, demonstrate the

continued importance of adult stem cell research and may one day help

doctors combat a form of diabetes in people, said senior author Bryon

Petersen, an assistant professor of pathology, immunology and

laboratory medicine at UF’s College of Medicine. But crucial questions

about the treatment’s potential may take another decade to answer.

“This is a preliminary study conducted in

animals with diabetes,” Petersen said. “But I think it’s a very

profound study, since it shows that adult stem cell plasticity still

exists and that if we understand how we can get a cell to

differentiate, we can actually teach an old dog some new tricks.”

The study was funded by grants from the

National Institutes of Health and other sources totaling $2 million.

Stem cells change into other types of cells, a

process called differentiation, Petersen said. Human embryos contain

large quantities of embryonic stem cells needed for tissue development.

After birth, another type called adult stem cells are produced that act

to repair the body. Experts disagree about the potential medical value

of adult stem cells.

“There are still a lot of questions that we

need to answer in the different facets of stem cell research,” Petersen

said. “Everybody tends to give the pat answer that clinical

applications of stem cell technology are at least 10 years down the

road. The way the field is moving, it may be 10 years, it may be

sooner.”

UF researchers conducted the study on bone

marrow stem cells obtained from adult rats, he said. Using a unique

chemical process, the reseachers induced laboratory cultures of cells

to form clusters that produced insulin and three other hormones usually

made only in the pancreas by structures called the islets of

Langerhans. When the clusters were implanted in nine diabetic mice, the

animals’ blood sugar levels dropped from about 550 milligrams per

deciliter to 200 milligrams per deciliter and remained stable for three

months. The mice were fed the same diet throughout the study.

“Whether or not these (clusters) are full,

mature islets remains to be seen,” said Petersen, who also is

associated with the UF College of Medicine’s Program in Stem Cell

Biology and Regenerative Medicine. “But they are (similar) enough that

they will play by the same rules as a normal islet would in the

pancreas.”

Petersen and lead investigator Seh-Hoon Oh, a

UF research associate, hope to get similar results in a future study

using laboratory cultures of human bone marrow stem cells or umbilical

cord blood cells, Petersen said. Eventually, the treatment could be

useful against type 1 diabetes, a disease in which the immune system

attacks the islets of Langerhans and destroys them, reducing the body’s

supply of insulin. The hormone is needed to convert sugar and starch

into energy.

Type 1 diabetes accounts for 5 percent to 10

percent of America’s 12 million diagnosed diabetes cases, according to

the American Diabetes Association. Its cause is unknown but both

genetics and environmental factors may play a role. The disease,

usually diagnosed in children and young adults, almost always must be

controlled with daily shots of insulin. Complications can include heart

disease, blindness, nerve damage and kidney damage.

The UF study suggests that eventually it may be

possible to take bone marrow from a person, put it in culture, turn it

into islet cells and then return it to the same person as an islet cell

transplant, said Dr. Neil Theise, an attending physician in the

departments of pathology and medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in New

York who is considered an expert on adult stem cells.

Dr. James Crawford, chairman of the UF

pathology department and editor-in-chief of Laboratory Investigation,

said, “These promising results just add to the growing evidence that

adult stem cells may be a critically important source of treatment

options for patients with debilitating diseases in which normal tissues

are destroyed.”

UF researchers hope that adult stem cells will

lead to a diabetes treatment that does not involve the danger of tissue

rejection, a major obstacle to current type 1 diabetes therapies using

transplanted islets of Langerhans, Petersen said. Additional research

is needed to explore whether the cell clusters mimic natural islets too

effectively for their own good - the diabetic mice used in the current

study were genetically altered and had no immune system, so their

bodies could not mistake the cell clusters for islets and attack them.

“As much as I would like to be able to go to a

clinical trial tomorrow, we’re not ready,” Petersen said.

The study began with removal of bone marrow

cells from the long leg bones of about 30 rats. The stem cells were

then separated from other cells using a chemical bath, collected and

cultured in a solution containing either large or small amounts of

glucose, a type of sugar.

When the cell clusters formed, researchers

confirmed production of the hormones using seven tests. In the study’s

second phase they implanted about 150 cell clusters each into nine

diabetic mice, under a membrane that surrounds each kidney. Within two

to three days blood glucose in the mice began to reach normal levels.

After another two weeks, the clusters were removed from six of the mice

and those animals’ blood glucose levels increased, suggesting the cell

clusters were responsible for the normalizing effect, Petersen said.

Mice that retained the cell clusters maintained

fairly normal blood glucose levels until the study ended after 90 days,

and the animals appeared capable of producing the insulin indefinitely,

Petersen said. Two control groups totaling 13 diabetic mice did not

receive cell cluster implants and continued to have abnormally high

blood glucose levels.

Oh designed the study, inspired by previous UF

research showing that rat liver stem cells could be coaxed into

producing insulin. Both Oh and Petersen are named in a patent

application for the technology, filed in October.

-30-

 

For more

information, contact:

Tom Nordlie, 352-392-2755

For further assistance, contact the UF News Desk.