Stem Cell Research for Islet Cells

[Guest guest]

One of the speakers at this year's Pancreatitis Symposium put on by

PAI was Dr. Merv Yoder, a neo-natologist at the IU School of

Medicine, who also has an interest in stem cell research. He gave

the attendees an up-to-date report on the promising implications of

stem cell research on patients with diabetes. They actually have

successfully " grown " pancreatic islet cells from embryonic stem cells

in mice, transplanted them into another adult diabetic mouse, where

the islet cells began producing insulin to the extent that external

insulin injections were no longer necessary.

Again this year, most of the sessions during the 2-day Symposium were

video-taped, and we will announce to the message board when the

copies are available.

In the meantime, here is a link to one of the websites Dr. Yoder told

us about that has some interesting articles about this fascinating

line of research.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/isletcelltransplantation.html

This is of interest to those patients who are not candidates for

the " auto-islet cell " transplantation operation such as is performed

by Dr. Sutherland in MN (because they are already diabetic due to

pancreatic damage and/or previous surgeries).

--Tull

Assistant Moderator

Pancreatitis Association, Int'l