We’re another step closer to reducing the need for round-the-clock insulin injections to manage diabetes after a new study showed how insulin-producing cells could be regenerated in the pancreas.
The breakthrough was made by getting pancreatic ductal progenitor cells – that give rise to the tissues lining the pancreas’s ducts – to develop to mimic the function of the β-cells that are usually ineffective or missing in people with type 1 diabetes.
Researchers, led by a team from the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute in Australia, investigated a new use for drugs already approved by the FDA that target the EZH2 enzyme in human tissue. Ordinarily, this enzyme controls cell development, providing an important biological check on growth.
Here, two small molecule inhibitors called GSK126 and Tazemetostat – already approved for use in cancer treatments – were used to take off some of the brakes imposed by EZH2, allowing the progenitor ductal cells to develop functions similar to those of β-cells.
“Targeting EZH2 is fundamental to β-cell regenerative potential,” write the researchers in their published paper. “Reprogrammed pancreatic ductal cells exhibit insulin production and secretion in response to a physiological glucose challenge ex vivo.”
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