Healthy
beta cells produce and release insulin in response to glucose in the blood, and they are vital to treating and preventing diabetes.
Beta cells produce insulin, which is released into the bloodstream when blood sugar levels reach a certain threshold.
In the pancreas, pancreatic
beta cells produce insulin, the hormone that provides fuel to the body's cells by transporting glucose.
After implantation, these cells are expected to become mature human islet tissue including well - regulated
beta cells producing insulin on demand.
Not exact matches
«Because brain
cells release amyloid
beta during activity, we think if the brain
cells can't rest the way they're supposed to and get that deep sleep, they
produce a relative excess of amyloid,» Dr. Yo - El Ju of Washington University, an author of that study, told Reuters.
Researchers in California have turned skin
cells in mice into insulin
producing beta cells, effectively curing the animals of diabetes.
If the tumor that Jobs had removed in 2004 had begun to break down prior to the surgery, White says, the tumor's dead
cells could have released protease and lipase enzymes that may have damaged
beta cells in the pancreas, which
produce insulin.
Insulin is
produced by
beta cells to control glucose levels in the blood.
Over the past 15 years, the GFP gene has enabled scientists to watch a plethora of previously murky biological processes in action: how nerve
cells develop in the brain, how insulin -
producing beta cells form in the pancreas of an embryo, how proteins are transported within
cells, and how cancer
cells metastasize through the body.
Activation of
beta - arrestin - 1 causes lung cancer
cells to
produce proteins associated with increased motility and invasion.
At the end of the study, children who lived in neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of nitrogen dioxide and particulates had experienced greater declines in insulin sensitivity and had signs of impaired pancreatic
beta cells, which
produce insulin.
People with diabetes can no longer regulate their blood sugar levels effectively via the hormone insulin, which is
produced by
beta cells in the pancreas.
The process involves the reversion of delta
cells (which
produce somatostatin, another pancreatic hormone) to a precursor - like
cell state, with proliferation and later reconstitution of the populations of
beta and delta
cells.
By introducing caerulein to the pancreas we were able to generate new
beta cells — the
cells that
produce insulin — potentially freeing patients from daily doses of insulin to manage their blood - sugar levels.»
GABA, or gamma - aminobutryic acid, is an amino acid
produced by the same
beta cells that make and secrete insulin.
A chemical
produced in the pancreas that prevented and even reversed Type 1 diabetes in mice had the same effect on human
beta cells transplanted into mice, new research has found.
The illness is caused by the loss of so - called pancreatic
beta cells, the
cells that
produce the hormone insulin, which is essential for regulating the use of sugar in the body.
The four children also had more of the types of species that are known to trigger gut inflammation, a possible prelude to type - 1 diabetes, in which the body's immune system mistakenly
produces antibodies that attack and destroy the
beta cells of the pancreas that normally make insulin.
In those mice, but not in normal mice, they found that caerulein caused existing alpha
cells in the pancreas to differentiate into insulin -
producing beta cells.
A new study by researchers at Sanford - Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford - Burnham) has found that a peptide called caerulein can convert existing
cells in the pancreas into those
cells destroyed in type 1 diabetes insulin -
producing beta cells.
At the very least, Domínguez - Bendala hopes that they could use BMP - 7 to convert the other 98 per cent of donor pancreas
cells into
beta cells, which, he estimates, could potentially provide enough insulin -
producing cells to transplant into seven people.
The genes set off production of a protein, neurogenin - 3 (Ngn3); thus, generating new, healthy insulin -
producing beta cells.
In type 1 and late - stage type 2 diabetes, the pancreas loses insulin -
producing beta cells, increasing instability in blood sugar levels.
The study, published in Nature Communications, shows that membralin regulates the
cell's machinery for
producing beta - amyloid (or amyloid
beta, Aβ), the protein that causes neurons to die in Alzheimer's disease.
Both types have been linked to reductions in the number of insulin -
producing beta cells.
However, tumors
produce high amounts of a protein called Transforming Growth Factor -
Beta (TGF - β) that suppresses the activity of NK
cells.
In marked contrast to the widely held notion that the insulin -
producing pancreatic
beta cell loses function with wear and tear, the researchers now show that mouse and human
beta cells are fully functional at advanced age.
Loss of insulin -
producing beta cells has long been recognized as a cause of Type 1 diabetes, in which the immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys
beta cells.
In a screen of more than 100,000 potential drugs, only one, harmine, drove human insulin -
producing beta cells to multiply, according to a study led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, funded by JDRF and the National Institutes of Health, and published online in Nature Medicine.
Diabetes results from too few insulin -
producing «
beta cells» in the pancreas secreting too little insulin, the hormone required to keep blood sugar levels in the normal range.
Unlike transplanted
beta cells — or other types of real
cells genetically engineered to release insulin for diabetes treatment (SN: 1/15/11, p. 9)-- these artificial
cells could be mass -
produced and have a much longer shelf life than live
cells, says study coauthor Zhen Gu, a biomedical engineer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
«There have been previous reports of other labs deriving
beta cell types from stem
cells, no other group has
produced mature
beta cells as suitable for use in patients,» he said.
«TGF -
beta functions as an important time signal that controls when a stem
cell should stop
producing one type of nerve
cell and instead start
producing another, while also gradually limiting the stem
cell's future development capacity,» says Johan Ericson, Professor of Developmental Biology, who led the study.
When human stem
cells develop into
beta cells in a dish, they only reach a precursor stage, unable to fully mature; this prevents them from effectively
producing insulin in response to glucose.
Pancreatic
beta cells help maintain normal blood glucose levels by
producing the hormone insulin — the master regulator of energy (glucose).
When the researchers raised mice that lacked ERRγ, the animals»
beta cells couldn't
produce insulin in response to blood glucose spikes.
Researchers, tackling a modern challenge of diabetes research, have identified a gene believed to disrupt the ability of
beta cells to
produce insulin resulting in type 1 diabetes.
Healthy mitochondria are crucial to allowing
beta cells to
produce insulin and control blood sugar levels.
«By identifying the signals that instruct mouse progenitor
cells to become
cells that make tubes and later insulin -
producing beta cells, we can transfer this knowledge to human stem
cells to more robustly make
beta cells, says Professor and Head of Department Henrik Semb from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem
Cell Biology at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences.
«For decades, researchers have tried to generate human pancreatic
beta cells that could be cultured and passaged long term under conditions where they
produce insulin.
But when the team instructed human
beta - like
cells grown in the lab to
produce more ERRγ, «Voilà,» says Evans.
Loss of insulin -
producing beta cells is a hallmark of diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune metabolic condition in which the body kills off all the pancreatic
beta cells that
produce the insulin needed for glucose regulation in the body.
In their work, the researchers also show how TGF -
beta can be used in stem
cell cultures to mass -
produce nerve
cells which in turn
produce the signalling substance serotonin.
«Researchers create insulin -
producing beta cells in a dish.»
People with Type 2 diabetes have an excess of a protein called islet amyloid polypeptide, or IAPP, and the accumulation of this protein is linked to the loss of insulin -
producing pancreatic
beta cells.
In type 1 diabetes, a person's immune system attacks and destroys the pancreatic
beta cells that
produce insulin.
The researchers used an adeno - associated viral (AAV) vector to deliver to the mouse pancreas two proteins, Pdx1 and MafA, which reprogrammed plentiful alpha
cells into functional, insulin -
producing beta cells.
A new study just published in the journal Glia and available online on July 11th, details the newly discovered mechanism by which astrocytes are involved in inhibitory synapse formation and presents strong evidence that Transforming Growth Factor
Beta 1 (TGF β1), a protein
produced by many
cell types (including astrocytes) is a key player in this process.
By comparing the gene expression patterns of normal
beta cells and insulin -
producing cells derived from alpha
cells, the researchers confirmed nearly complete cellular reprogramming.