ESPE Abstracts

The ultimate therapy for type 1 diabetes is the replacement of the lost insulin producing cells instead of the actual life-saving but imperfect substitution of insulin. The isolation of embryonic stem cells (ESC) and later the reprogramming of somatic cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) raised enormous hopes for cell based therapies in diabetes type 1. The first important stage in the differentiation process of ESC/iPSC is the generation of definite endoderm that ...

Background: The recent discovery that genetically-modified pancreatic alpha-cells can regenerate and convert into beta-like cells in vivo holds great promise for diabetes research. However, to eventually translate these findings to human, it is crucial to discover compounds with similar activities.Results: We recently identified GABA as an inducer of alpha-to-beta-like cell conversion in vivo. This conversion induces alpha-cell replacement mechanisms thr...