Friday, October 10, 2014
Helmsley Charitable Trust and JPB Foundation Among Funders Fighting Type 1 Diabetes
Researchers from Harvard announced Thursday a breakthrough in treating type 1 diabetes with stem cells.
Published in the journal Cell, their work involves making human insulin-producing beta cells from human embryonic stem cells in massive quantities required for pharmaceutical purposes and cell transplantation. This is notable because aside achieving the quantities needed for transplant; the researchers were able to manufacture beta cells that functioned like natural beta cells.
As an autoimmune metabolic condition, type 1 diabetes kills of pancreatic beta cells needed for producing insulin required for regulating glucose in the body. As such, the progress Harvard researchers made is very crucial, another step towards making beta cell transplants possible....