Transplant Cured Type 2 Diabetes in Rats, Not Needing Immune Suppression Drugs

Filed in archive Diagnostics , Studies , Treatment on September 19, 2006

According to a new report from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, an approach proven to cure a rat model of type 1 or juvenile-onset diabetes also works in a rat model of type 2 or adult-onset diabetes.

According to senior author Marc R. Hammerman, M.D., the Chromalloy Professor of Renal Diseases in Medicine:

"Finding that we can cure type 2 diabetes in the same way is very significant because in humans, type 2 diabetes is almost 20 times more prevalent than type 1 diabetes. There are about 200 million type 2 diabetics worldwide, and the incidence is rapidly increasing."

The treatment approach is transplanting precursors of the pancreas from embryonic pigs which in a previous study, Hammerman and co-developer Sharon A. Rogers showed that cells can be transplanted so that they grow into insulin producers without triggering attacks by the rats' immune systems.

This treatment approach cured the rats' diabetes without the risky immune suppression drugs required to prevent rejection in other transplant-based treatments.

Organogenesis is an emerging field that Hammerman and Rogers are experts of. This process focuses on growing organs from stem cells and other embryonic cell clusters known as organ primordia. Other embryonic stem cells can become virtually any cell type; primordia however are locked into becoming cells of a particular organ.

This was the approach used by Hammerman and Rogers for diabetes treatment: using pig pancreatic primordia.

In previous research, they found that obtaining the primordia early in the pigs' development rendered them "invisible" to the rats' immune system, eliminating the need for antirejection drugs.

In the new study, they transplanted the pig primordia into a strain of rat with a disorder that closely resembles human type 2 diabetes.

...Obtaining the same results: the transplants cured the rats' diabetes without any immune suppression.

These results appear online and will be published in Transplant Immunology.

Read more details from the Washington University School of Medicine.

Photo Credit: [University of Wisconsin, Department of Surgery]