The newspaper
Barcelona - Monday, 10/22/2018
Diabetes is a disease that is characterized by high and persistent levels of blood sugar.This phenomenon occurs when certain pancreas cells in charge of insulin production are destroyed can no longer exert their function, which is a point of non -return for the disease.Now, a team of researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has managed to transform a group of pancreatic cells to exercise insulin producers.The finding, published on Monday in Nature Cell Biology magazine, could not only raise new therapeutic strategies to treat diabetes but also could also mean a breakthrough for different diseases related to cell death.
According to the team of researchers responsible for this new study, the success achieved in the transformation of these pancreatic cells suggests that this same process could also work to reprogram other cells of the body to exercise a different function from the one that corresponds to them.On the other hand, the study suggests that this finding would also be a challenge to the idea that differentiated functional mature cells remain stable forever, so there could be the possibility of recovering certain lost cellular functions.
"What we are showing here is that the state of differentiation of a certain cell is not carved in stone. Cellular identity, at all stages of life, is modulated by the immediate cell environment, particularly by inhibitory signals. Therefore, the maintenance of cell identity is an active process of inhibition throughout the life of the cell, and not an intrinsic or liabilities of differentiation, ”explains Pedro Herrera, a researcher at the University of Ginebra's Faculty of Medicineand responsible for this new study.
Cell reprogramming
The pancreas contains several types of cells that produce different hormones responsible for regulating blood sugar levels.Among them are α cells (which produce glucagon), β cells (which produce insulin) and δ cells (which produce somatostatin, a hormone that acts as a local regulator to control the activity of cells and β).Together, they form small groups known as pancreatic islets.Glucagon increases blood sugar levels, while insulin has the opposite effect.In patients with diabetes, in the absence of functional β cells, blood sugar levels are persistently high.
A few years ago, the same team of researchers related to this new finding demonstrated the existence of a regeneration capacity of insulin -producing cells in mice.Surprisingly, in some animals without β cells, new insulin producing cells may appear spontaneously.That is, some of the other pancreatic cells can be reprogrammed to learn to segregate insulin."However, this phenomenon only affects 1 to 2% of α and δ cells. But why some cells perform this conversion and others do not? And, above all, would it be possible to induce this process? These are the questions thatThey constitute the core of our work, "explains Professor Herrera.