HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Purchase Article View Shopping Cart Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Request Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Billestrup, N. Articles by Otonkoski, T. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Billestrup, N. Articles by Otonkoski, T. Related Collections Related Article Social Bookmarking                What's this?

Dedifferentiation for Replication of Human β-Cells

A Division Between Mice and Men?

¹ Steno Diabetes Center, Gentofte, Denmark
² Hospital for Children and Adolescents and Biomedicum Stem Cell Center, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Corresponding author: Nils Billestrup, Steno Diabetes Center, Niels Steensens Vej 6, Gentofte 2820, Denmark. E-mail: nbil@steno.dk

Abbreviations: DsRed, red fluorescent protein; EMT, epithelial-mesenchymal transition; GFP, green fluorescent protein

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

Human β-cells, generated in ample quantities, are a prerequisite in order to realize a wider application of β-cell replacement therapy for diabetes. Theoretically, there are several potential sources of new β-cells, including embryonic or adult stem/progenitor cells, transdifferentiation of nonislet tissues such as liver, or the proliferation of fully differentiated β-cells (1). Because it has been demonstrated that all β-cells could theoretically be induced to proliferate (2,3), a significant increase in β-cell number might be achieved by simply stimulating the proliferation of existing β-cells through application of specific growth factors, as has been achieved for cultured rat and mouse β-cells (4). Unfortunately, stimulation of human β-cell proliferation in culture has proven to be much more difficult than for rodent cells. In a recent comparison, the conditions leading to efficient proliferation of rat β-cells were not found to have an effect on human β-cells (5). However, it should be emphasized that this does not preclude the possibility that unidentified culture conditions for human β-cell expansion could exist.

Another potential source of β-cells that has recently received much attention is the fibroblast-like cells that become evident following the gradual loss of endocrine cells in long-term cultures of human islets (6,7). The nature and origin of these fibroblast-like cells emerging from islets have been closely examined because of their proposed capacity to function as endocrine precursors (7–9). These cells are not only able to proliferate and expand, but are also able to retain their ability to produce at least small amounts of insulin following induction of differentiation . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

Related Article:

In Vitro Proliferation of Cells Derived From Adult Human β-Cells Revealed By Cell-Lineage Tracing

Holger A. Russ, Yael Bar, Philippe Ravassard, and Shimon Efrat
Diabetes 2008 57: 1575-1583. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]