University of Minnesota Research Hold Hope for Diabetics

http://www.startribune.com/789/story/257336.html

They're not ready to try this with people yet. But researchers at the University of Minnesota announced Sunday that they were able to reverse diabetes in monkeys by transplanting insulin-producing cells from pigs.

"I would say it's one of the more promising things on the horizon," said Dr. Brian Flanagan of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in New York City.

The latest study involved only a dozen monkeys. But it showed "proof of principle" that pig cells can cure animals that are "one step away from humans," said Dr. Bernhard Hering, who led the research as director of the Islet Transplant Program at the University of Minnesota.
Hering said he hopes to begin human tests in about three years, if all goes well.

In the study, diabetic monkeys were injected with pig islet cells, which make insulin, and survived without insulin shots for up to six months. Some eventually rejected the cell transplants, but others survived for the duration of the study. The results were published online Sunday by the journal Nature Medicine.

In the past, Hering and other scientists have shown that injecting healthy human islet cells into diabetics can reverse the disease, at least temporarily.

The problem is supply: Each year, only about 3,000 to 4,000 donor organs are available. A single human pancreas can produce only enough islet cells, at most, for one transplant.