Now, that is starting to change. Researchers at Northwestern University have carried out an islet cell transplant from rats to mice without the use of anti-rejection medicines. Xunrong Luo is the head of the Northwestern medical school’s human islet cell transplantation program. She says the transplanted rat cells produced insulin in mice for more than 300 days.
“They survived essentially indefinitely. So they continued to produce insulin without the need of any immunosuppression and they just continued to maintain normal glucose levels in these diabetic mice.”
The mice were given white blood cells from a rat’s spleen, which is part of the immune system. They were bathed in chemicals that put the cells into a sleeping condition known as programmed cell death.
The changed cells were injected into mice. They entered the spleen and liver of the mice, but soon after, they were destroyed by cells called macrophages.
Researchers say the macrophages recognized the sleeping rat cells as waste. In that process, small pieces of the rat spleen cell ended up on the surface of the macrophages. This taught the mouse’s immune-system T cells to accept islet cells, which researchers transplanted seven days later.
“So we are pretty excited about that because next step is to see if we can translate this into larger scales, into larger animals.”
Xunrong Luo says her team will now try to transplant pig cells into monkeys. She also wants to use what is almost an unlimited supply of pig islet cells for transplants into patients with type 1 diabetes.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25