Just as many scientists had given up the search, researchers have discovered that the pancreas does indeed harbor stem cells with the capacity to generate new insulin-producing beta cells.
If the finding made in adult mice holds for humans, the newfound progenitor cells will represent “an obvious target for therapeutic regeneration of beta cells in diabetes,” the researchers report in the Jan. 25 issue of Cell, a publication of Cell Press.
“One of the most interesting characteristics of these [adult] progenitor cells is that they are almost indistinguishable from embryonic progenitors,” said Harry Heimberg of the JDRF Center at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium and the Beta Cell Biology Consortium. “In terms of their structure and gene expression, there are no major differences. They look and behave just like embryonic beta cell progenitors."
Insulin is required for cells to take up blood sugar, the body's primary energy source. In people with certain types of diabetes, blood sugar rises due to an inability of pancreatic beta cells to produce insulin in sufficient quantities.
Previous studies had failed to demonstrate the existence of bona fide beta cell progenitors in the pancreas after birth. The elusiveness of this cell type reached a summit when genetic lineage tracing provided evidence that pre-existing beta cells, rather than stem/progenitor cells, are the major source of new beta cells in adult mice, the researchers said. “Most people gave up looking because they are so few and so hard to activate,” Heimberg said.