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Stem Cells May Provide Cure for Diabetes |
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Tuesday, 05 December 2006 |
Source: Yahoo
CAPE TOWN (AFP) - Stem cell science may yield a cure for diabetes currently afflicting nearly 250 million people and counting, an expert told an international conference in Cape Town.
"We are making huge progress," diabetologist and stem cell researcher Wendy Macfarlane of Britain's Brighton university told delegates attending a giant international diabetes conference on Tuesday.
"Advances made in the past two to three years have been astonishing. The prospects are very exciting."
Research is under way to try to convert embryonic and adult stem cells into insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells.
Stem cells are precursor cells that can metamorphose into any kind of cell.
Macfarlane said a perfect replacement beta cell had yet to be created but added that researchers in the United States hoped to achieve this and start clinical trials in animals by the turn of the decade.
"The progress they've made this far suggest they will probably meet that goal."
The aim is to create a glucose-sensitive, insulin-producing cell which responds to changes in physiological glucose levels as though in a normal body.
"They have been able to get a degree of mimicking of the normal developmental process that I don't think we could have imagined a few years ago," Macfarlane told AFP on the sidelines of the congress.
"What we've got are cells that will secrete insulin in response to glucose but not yet something that works exactly like an adult beta cell."
On Monday, congress delegates heard that diabetes was likely to affect 380 million people within 20 years "if nothing is done".
The disease currently accounts for 3.8 million deaths a year.
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