Treating Diabetes With Transplanted Cells

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naturally made insulin.
That's why a therapy that maintains glucose values within normal from
the begging is needed. An ideal treatment would be the implantation of islets.
This, in theory, would only have to be done once and would insure proper insulin
production. Successful grafts would also prevent diabete-related ills.
At Paul E. Lacy's lab, experiments have been done for twenty- five years
on such a process. At first they were just trying to understand the mechanics of
hormone secretion. To start this they needed a way to separate islet clusters
from the pancreas. These constitute only 2% of the entire pancreas, though, and
are scattered throughout it. In 1967 they found a solution and took the islets
from rats. These islets were transplanted in inbred rats to see if it would
control insulin production in diabetes patients. It was a success and kept blood
sugar levels normal. It even fixed early complications in the eyes and the
kidneys.
The next step was ...

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