Techotic

Although it is years from coming to a human test patient near you, a bunch of extreme biologists have turned some cells in mice pancreas into specialized cells (the exact same ones that go missing in juvenile diabetes.

Basically they have reprogrammed the cells to fight diabetes and thus rid it from the face of the earth. The ironic thing according to Douglas Melton from Harvard University, is that the process was very easy to replicate. And went on to call the study “a very elegant and important contribution to the reprogramming field.”

A team of biologists has turned mouse pancreas tissue into specialized cells, the same ones that go missing in juvenile diabetes.

The mouse study, led by Qiao Zhou of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, opens a new avenue to “regenerative medicine,” in which physicians remake patient cells into tissues that can be used to treat diabetes and heart and brain ailments.

In the three-year study, researchers infected the pancreases of dozens of 2-month-old mice with a virus that contained three genes active in insulin-producing beta cells. More than 20% of the infected pancreas cells turned into beta cells, a rate hundreds of times better than past attempts to turn embryonic stem cells into such specialized tissues.

Embryonic stem cells are the master cells from which specialized tissue arises. Harvesting them involves the destruction of embryos, which is controversial. Reprogrammed cells could remove regenerative medicine from the political and religious arena, although Melton and others say research progress requires all cell types.

While this does sound like good news, I can only imagine the amount of damage our bodies will suffer when technology like this gets on the market. After all we won’t need to watch what we eat, cause we can just grow a new pancreas again. Don’t tamper with nature I say.

[via usatoday]