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Latest Beta Cells Articles
Diabetes and Beta Cells Article Archives
September 2012
Israeli researchers believe that they have found a way to increase the survival and effectiveness of insulin-producing pancreatic cells transplanted into diabetic mice. The technique, developed by scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, involves surrounding the transplanted beta cells with a three-dimensional latticework of nurturing blood vessels called "engineered tissue."
0 comments - Posted Sep 10, 2012
July 2012
Immediately starting intense therapy for newly diagnosed type 2s preserved their beta cell functioning for 3.5 years, according to a University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center study.
0 comments - Posted Jul 18, 2012
August 2011
Low doses of metformin and rosiglitazone seem to delay the onset of type 2 in prediabetic people who have impaired glucose tolerance, according to a Canadian study. However, although the drug combination was effective over the first year of the study in helping to control glucose levels and insulin resistance, it was not effective subsequently in delaying the onset of insulin resistance and pancreatic beta cell deterioration.
0 comments - Posted Aug 7, 2011
June 2011
Over the last decade, dramatic changes have occurred in our understanding of the onset and progression of prediabetes. Lightning speed changes have also occurred regarding the therapies available to achieve optimal blood glucose control. Even with all of this change, however, many old dogmas hang on. It's time to become aware of the new realities. In this article, I focus on two common old dogmas and the new realities.
0 comments - Posted Jun 16, 2011
April 2011
Every year four million baby teeth fall out, and 1.4 million wisdom teeth are pulled out of our collective mouth. Until recently, the only entity really interested in all those teeth was the tooth fairy. But all that changed in the year 2000, with the discovery that dental pulp contains adult stem cells. In the not-too-distant future, those stem cells might be used for growing new islet cells to cure diabetes. The problem is, how to keep the teeth nice and fresh until that hoped-for day. That's where Provia Laboratories comes in, with their Store-A-Tooth service.
0 comments - Posted Apr 24, 2011
March 2011
This List defines terms that people with prediabetes commonly encounter as they learn more about the condition.
0 comments - Posted Mar 29, 2011
February 2011
The final patient has performed the last visit of the main study period in Diamyd Medical's European Phase III study. Treatment with the antigen based therapy Diamyd® is made to investigate whether beta cell function and thereby blood sugar control can be preserved in children and adolescents with new onset type 1 diabetes. The top line results from this study are expected to be reported as planned, in late spring 2011.
0 comments - Posted Feb 15, 2011
INDIANAPOLIS and NEW YORK - Eli Lilly and Company and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) today announced that they have signed an agreement to fund early-stage research that could enable patients with type 1 diabetes to regenerate insulin-producing cells destroyed by the disease.
0 comments - Posted Feb 4, 2011
December 2010
(Reuters) - Stem cells can be transformed into the pancreatic cells needed to treat diabetes and into complex layers of intestinal tissue, scientists demonstrated in two experiments reported on Sunday.
0 comments - Posted Dec 13, 2010
August 2010
"The objective of this clinical trial (research study) is to determine if the medications can rescue the few beta cells that remain soon after the diagnosis of type 1 diabetes; and whether new beta cells can even be regenerated," commented Alex Rabinovitch, MD, Principal Investigator of the trial and Associate Director of The Sanford Project. "The investigational combinations of these medications could possibly allow patients to decrease or no longer need to inject insulin to keep their blood levels under proper control."
0 comments - Posted Aug 12, 2010
June 2010
A malfunction in the pancreas's "circadian clock*," the built-in timer found in all living things that regulates major biological processes, may be one of the reasons that people develop diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Jun 29, 2010
May 2010
Over 80 years ago, famed diabetologist Elliot Joslin said about the treatment of patients with type 1 diabetes: "Ketoacidosis may kill a patient, but frequent hypoglycemic reactions will ruin him." Unfortunately, hypoglycemia continues to be the most difficult problem facing most patients, families, and caregivers who deal with the management of type 1 diabetes on a daily basis. Frequent hypoglycemia episodes not only can "ruin," or adversely impact the quality of life for patients, but also, when severe, can cause seizures, coma, and even death.
0 comments - Posted May 13, 2010
Dr. Richard Hays announced today that he is now recruiting children with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes for Protégé Encore, a randomized, placebo-controlled Phase III clinical trial. This is the second of two Phase III studies testing the safety and efficacy of an investigational drug called teplizumab. The first study, known as Protégé, has completed enrollment of more than 530 subjects with type 1 diabetes. There is currently no approved therapy to slow the progression of type 1 diabetes.
0 comments - Posted May 12, 2010
Osiris Therapeutics announced that it has been granted Orphan Drug designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Prochymal as a treatment for type 1 diabetes mellitus. The FDA instituted the Orphan Drug Act to promote the development of treatments for underserved patient populations. To be eligible for Orphan Drug designation, the treatment must target a disease that affects fewer than 200,000 new patients per year in the United States.
0 comments - Posted May 7, 2010
April 2010
NEW YORK, April 27, 2010 - The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation announced today that it is partnering with Living Cell Technologies (LCT), a New Zealand-based biotechnology company focused on developing cell based therapeutics, in a Phase II clinical trial to study the safety and effectiveness of transplanting encapsulated insulin-producing cells from pigs as a treatment for type 1 diabetes with significant hypoglycemia unawareness.
0 comments - Posted Apr 28, 2010
The first human trials of the latest design of an artificial pancreas for people with type 1 diabetes found the device worked without causing low blood sugar (hypoglycemia).
0 comments - Posted Apr 18, 2010
Healthy, insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas have a relatively long life and typically do not replicate under normal conditions. Any loss of beta cells, therefore, is usually permanent. In the case of type 1 diabetes, for example, the destruction of beta cells by the body's own immune system is permanent.
0 comments - Posted Apr 9, 2010
March 2010
You may not have heard of GAD, but it's a hot topic in the world of type 1 diabetes research. GAD, which stands for glutamic acid decarboxylase, is an enzyme in the brain and the pancreas that plays several roles in the body. As an enzyme, it converts the excitatory amino acid glutamate into the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA, which nerve cells use to communicate. But it also has a less helpful role, as an autoantigen (an element of self that provokes the generation of antibodies) in autoimmune diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Mar 23, 2010
An enzyme that destroys pancreatic beta cells in lab mice has now been observed in human beta cells. Because scientists already know how to delete the mouse gene that produces the enzyme, they are hopeful that the same therapy can eventually be applied to people with type 1 diabetes. If so, it would be one of the most powerful therapies yet for addressing the destruction of insulin-producing beta cells that causes type 1.
0 comments - Posted Mar 1, 2010
February 2010
A hormone responsible for the body's stress response is also linked to the growth of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, according to JDRF- funded researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California. The findings are the latest advances to underscore the potential for regeneration as a key component of a possible cure for type 1 diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Feb 22, 2010
Researchers at RIKEN and Fukuoka University have pinpointed the mechanism responsible for early rejection of transplanted pancreatic islet cells in the treatment of type 1 diabetes. A new system based on this mechanism has been shown to vastly increase transplant efficiency, setting the stage for the development of powerful new treatment techniques.
0 comments - Posted Feb 9, 2010
January 2010
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have transformed ordinary mouse skin cells directly into neurons, bypassing the need for stem cells or even stemlike cells and greatly speeding up the field of regenerative medicine.
0 comments - Posted Jan 29, 2010
An international research consortium has found 13 new genetic variants that influence blood glucose regulation, insulin resistance, and the function of insulin-secreting beta cells in populations of European descent. Five of the newly discovered variants increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, the most common form of diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Jan 23, 2010
December 2009
BOSTON, Mass. - Dec. 23, 2009 - Cells in your body are constantly churning out poisonous forms of oxygen (oxidants) and mopping them up with a countervailing force of proteins and chemicals (anti-oxidants). This balancing act of oxidative stress is particularly likely to go haywire in beta cells, the insulin-producing cells that malfunction and then start to die off in type 2 diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Dec 29, 2009
Rituxamab, a drug that treats lymphoma and rheumatoid arthritis, may soon be used to help combat the destruction of pancreatic beta cells in newly diagnosed cases of type 1 diabetes. Researchers at Indiana University have found that the drug, originally developed and sold by Genentech as Rituxan, temporarily slows or stops the destruction of the 10 or 20 percent of beta cells that type 1s typically have remaining when they are first diagnosed.
0 comments - Posted Dec 21, 2009
NEW YORK, Dec. 17, 2009 - The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, a leader in setting the agenda for diabetes research worldwide, said today that it will begin working with The Johnson & Johnson Corporate Office of Science and Technology, and its affiliates, to speed the development of drug targets and pathways to promote the survival and function of insulin-producing cells in people who have diabetes. The program will look to fund research at academic centers around the world that could eventually lead to novel drug targets and industry collaborations for the treatment of type 1 diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Dec 19, 2009
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A 21-year old Airman severely wounded in Afghanistan is recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center after several surgeries and an unprecedented transplant.
0 comments - Posted Dec 17, 2009
September 2009
One thing that really frustrates people with diabetes mellitus is the biopharma industry's focus on treatments rather than cures. A cure is what the diabetes community wants, not another band-aid. So the existence of a biopharma company that calls itself "CureDM" is promising, and its first product, Pancreate, seems to be on its way to fulfilling that promise.
0 comments - Posted Sep 28, 2009
By reprogramming skin cells from people with type 1 diabetes, scientists have produced beta cells that secrete insulin in response to changes in glucose levels. Dr. Douglas Melton and his colleagues at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute started by using the skin cells to generate induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. Once they had iPS cells, the researchers manipulated them into developing into pancreatic islet (beta) cells.
0 comments - Posted Sep 19, 2009
August 2009
Our genes are like a recipe for a human. It's a very complicated recipe, determining how much of this protein and how much of that enzyme need to be added into the mix in order for us to function properly, but our genes are pretty good at getting it right. Although we are still learning how the recipe works, what ingredients (gene products) are involved, and when are they are produced, our knowledge is growing fast.
0 comments - Posted Aug 28, 2009
There's a gene whose name you should remember because it could mark a crucial point in the war on type 1 diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Aug 13, 2009
A study from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston says that magnetic resonance imaging could become a useful tool for diagnosing diabetes and helping doctors determine the proper course of treatment.
0 comments - Posted Aug 8, 2009
July 2009
A protein that builds up in the pancreases of baboons and leads to the suppression of insulin-producing beta cells, may provide one of the most significant indicators yet for predicting the onset of type 2 diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Jul 28, 2009
Of all the quests that researchers have undertaken in search of a cure or decisive treatment for type 1 diabetes, the search for a vaccine has to be the boldest. But how would you develop such a vaccine, and how would it work?
0 comments - Posted Jul 9, 2009
March 2009
Researchers funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation have found two chemical compounds that can trigger the growth of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. The discovery could become the basis for medicines designed to regenerate the pancreas in people with type 1 diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Mar 11, 2009
March 2008
Talk of a cure has been around forever. Sometimes it seems as if the cure is a constantly receding dream, always ten years away or just around the next corner.
0 comments - Posted Mar 9, 2008
July 2007
A team of five seniors and two freshmen at Johns Hopkins University has devised a little "pouch" to hold microcapsules of beta cells in the portal vein, from which the cells can send out insulin while safely protected inside. It's made by sandwiching a porous cylinder of nylon mesh between two cylindrical metal stents, similar to the ones that are used to keep clogged blood vessels open.
0 comments - Posted Jul 23, 2007
June 2007
A new study out of London and Paris indicates in the developing embryo, beta cells form in the pancreas in response to the presence of glucose. Glucose triggers a gene called Neurogenin3 to switch on another gene, neuroD, which is critical for the normal development of beta cells. If glucose levels are low, the gene doesn't switch on and the beta cells don't develop.
0 comments - Posted Jun 18, 2007
May 2007
A team of five seniors and two freshman at Johns Hopkins University has devised a little “pouch” to hold microcapsules of beta cells in the portal vein, from which the cells can send out insulin while safely protected inside.
0 comments - Posted May 18, 2007
February 2007
Novocell, Inc., a San Diego, California-based stem cell engineering company, announced on October 19, 2006, the development of a process that “efficiently converts human embryonic stem cells into insulin-producing pancreatic endocrine cells.”
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 2007
July 2006
I just discovered your May 2005 article, “Why Did the JDRF Try to Discredit Cure Research?” That, and lingering resentment over my own futile correspondence with Van Etten and Ahearn, inspired me to dig deeper into some points you made and some reasonable suspicions your article aroused.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 2006
March 2004
Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals is sponsoring a new study on the safety and efficacy of INGAP-peptide.
0 comments - Posted Mar 1, 2004
February 2002
Five years ago, when Dana Elias, PhD, first clutched a publication reporting that a synthetic peptide had halted beta-cell destruction in mice that already were showing high blood-glucose levels, she felt a shiver of excitement. She had helped develop the synthetic peptide, called DiaPep277.
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 2002
September 2000
The precursor to insulin produced by the pancreas's beta cells is a peptide chain known as proinsulin. Made up of amino acids bound into a u-shape by a connecting polypeptide, proinsulin is stored in beta cells until a glucose load demands the release of insulin. At this point, the connecting molecule is broken off the bottom of the "u"-its shape earning it the moniker C-peptide-freeing the insulin molecule for secretion.
0 comments - Posted Sep 1, 2000
August 2000
Scientists at the University of California at San Diego recently announced that they have successfully grown beta cells that can produce insulin. The finding may eliminate one of the biggest obstacles in making islet transplantation a viable treatment for diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 2000
February 2000
A promising drug trial at the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at New York's Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center needs children, aged 8 and older, who have recently been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, to participate.
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 2000
December 1999
Dr. David Matthews, chairman of the Oxford Center for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, says beta-cell deterioration is "virtually inevitable" in persons with type 2 diabetes. He urges doctors who treat type 2s to refrain from telling them that they only have "mild diabetes," and instead tell them that they are still at considerable risk for diabetic complications.
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 1999
March 1999
Q: I just finished reading the November 1998 issue of DIABETES HEALTH regarding the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (JDF) islet transplantation $20 million advance. I didn't see anything about the cloning of islets, however, which I had read about in a previous issue of DIABETES HEALTH. I am curious to know how realistic the cloning process is, and when we might see it actually take place.
0 comments - Posted Mar 1, 1999