Increasing Insulin Producing Cells Through Reprogramming May Help Fight Diabetes

A new study shows promising results in fighting diabetes as researchers found treating human and mice cells with compounds that alter nuclear material called chromatin, increases the count of beta cell genes in the alpha cells, reports Medical Xpress.

Diabetes is mainly caused due to either insufficient production of insulin in the pancreas or the insulin produced in the body is resisted by the cells in the body. Both type1 and type2 diabetes have no cure but can be controlled with regular medication. Several researches have been conducted to cure diabetes by triggering the insulin producing beta cells, but have gained no effective results. The new study looks in to the possibilities of increasing the beta cells in the body with which both types of diabetes can be cured, says the report.

"This would be a win-win situation for diabetics - they would have more insulin-producing beta cells and there would be fewer glucagon-producing alpha cells," says lead author Klaus H Kaestner, Ph.D., professor of genetics and member of the Institute of Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, according to Medical Xpress.

Alpha cells are endocrine cells that are responsible for synthesizing and secreting the peptide hormone glucagon, which results in the increase of the glucose levels in the blood.

Researchers have a theory that includes transplantation of healthy beta cells in to the body which will suppress the glucagon levels and induce the insulin in the body to cure both types of diabetes. However, researchers have failed to generate these beta cells in the laboratory with all possible efforts.

"We treated human islet cells with a chemical that inhibits a protein that puts methyl chemical groups on histones, which - among many other effects - leads to removal of some histone modifications that affect gene expression," says Kaestner. "We then found a high frequency of alpha cells that expressed beta-cell markers, and even produced some insulin, after drug treatment."

Histones are important protein components of chromatin that winds around the DNA strands in a compact form.

"To some extent human alpha cells appear to be in a 'plastic' epigenetic state," explains Kaestner. "We reasoned we might use that to reprogram alpha cells towards the beta-cell phenotype to produce these much-needed insulin-producing cells."

The study is published online in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

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