Diabetes is a fast-growing epidemic and still remains as the seventh leading cause of death in the United States. Researchers have spent years figuring out a possible treatment for this chronic disease and they found that unused human pancreas may be recycled as new organs for diabetics.
Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center (Institute for Regenerative Medicine) say that unused pancreas of organ donors can be used as a base to create a new-generation and bio-artificial one. With a new pancreas, diabetics may ultimately return to pre-diabetic normal conditions in terms of blood sugar levels and insulin production.
Published in the journal Annals of Surgery, the study aimed to examine a new approach in which the researchers build a new pancreas from an organ donor's.
"We see these unused organs as potential 'hardware.' The 'software' would be the patient's own cells, so that there would be no issues with rejection," study author Dr. Giuseppe Orlando, a transplant surgeon and regenerative medicine researcher explained.
"We believe this research represents the first critical step toward a fully human-derived artificial pancreas," he added.
The researchers studied 25 human pancreata, which they decellularized with Triton-based solution. Results show that the framework of blood vessels remained intact even after the cell removal process.
The organs were complete with cell and DNA clearance, proteins, growth factors, ability to induce angiogenesis and immunogenicity. The new pancreas can maintain its innate molecular component, something vital for survival of the organ.
In diabetics, the pancreas cannot compensate for the production of insulin and circulating glucose in the body. Insulin is responsible for transporting glucose to the different cells of the body. Because less of this hormone is produced, blood glucose will shoot up and lead to a lot of complications.
"We, therefore, conclude that hpaECMs (acellular extracellular matrix scaffolds from the human pancreas) has the potential to become an ideal platform for investigations aiming at the manufacturing of a regenerative medicine-inspired bio-artificial endocrine pancreas," the authors concluded in their study.
In the United States alone, around 29.1 million Americans in 2012 had diabetes. Of the 29.1 million Americans, 21.0 were diagnosed and 8.1 million remained undiagnosed.
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