Researchers collaborating at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research and the Rebecca and John Moores Cancer Center at the University of California at San Diego have shown that endocrine progenitor stem cells exist in the adult human pancreas, and they have demonstrated that these stem cells can be transformed into insulin-producing cells. These findings, to be published in the March 1 edition of Nature Medicine, advance a major, long-range goal in developing new therapies for the treatment of diabetes, based on transplantation of insulin-producing cells and suggest a new approach to treating diabetes by transforming adult progenitor cells residing within the pancreas into insulin-producing cells.
