How to make a beta cell from a stem cell
I stumbled across this interesting article that outlines what it might take to actually turn a stem cell into a beta cell. Beta cells are the pancreatic cells that produce insulin.The author, Paul Myers, is an associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, so I'd hope he's fairly accurate in his description of the process.
Let me summarize the article by saying, making beta cells from stem cells isn't going to be easy. Reading the steps involved reminds me of the song Dry Bones, 'With the leg bone connected to the knee bone, and the knee bone connected to the thigh bone...'.
To make a beta cell, you have to first convert ES cells into mesendoderm, then into endoderm, then into Anterior Definitive Endoderm (ADE), then into midgut endoderm, then into general pancreatic tissue, then into pancreatic endocrine cells, and finally, you can apply a signal to switch them into the beta cell state.And even if this could all be done, you'd still need to deal with the
chronic difficulty of removing whatever destroyed the patient's original set of beta cells.
So I won't be holding my breath on this line of research. I think it'll bring benefits, but probably not anytime soon. My money is still on the research being done by Dr. Denise Faustman.
Labels: cure, research, stemcells
posted by Bernard @ 8:19 PM
3 Comments:
Dr. Faustman is really the only one who is addressing the autoimmune issue by having actually found a way to correct the immune system.
It's all well and good that other scientists are doing their research, but in the end, Dr. Faustman is the only one at the starting gate while everyone else is still trying to find their way to it.
Bernard,
What I find interesting is that my wife and I both developed autoimmune disease later in life. She has fibromyalgia. and was diagnosed a year before I developed Type 1 (LADA). Neither one of us has a family history of this illness. I am beginning to think that our latent disease were triggered by an environmental factor (maybe plastics). I have no proof of any of this.
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