Category Archives: Diabetes

SACRAMENTO, CA. - A drug used to treat diabetes encourages the brain to grow and repair itself, afinding with far-reaching implications for the treatment of Alzheimers and brain injury, a new study published in Cell: Stem Cell reports.

The widely used diabetes drug metformin comes with the unexpected side effect of causing the growth of new neurons in the brain and makes mice smarter, the July 6th issue of Cell Stem Cell, a Cell Press publication, said. The study has potentially wide-reaching implications for the treatment of Alzheimers in humans and brain related injury.

The discovery has important implications for brain repair because it works not by introducing new stem cells but rather by spurring those that are already present into action, said the study's lead author Freda Miller of the University of Toronto-affiliated Hospital for Sick Children. And since the drug is already so widely used and so safe it means doctors could quickly begin using the drug for brain therapy treatment.

Earlier work by Miller's team highlighted a pathway known as aPKC-CBP for its essential role in telling neural stem cells where and when to differentiate into mature neurons, the report said. Other researchers had found before them that the same pathway is important for the metabolic effects of the drug metformin, but in liver cells.

"We put two and two together," Miller says. If metformin activates the CBP pathway in the liver, they thought, maybe it could also do that in neural stem cells of the brain to encourage brain repairm, he said.

Mice taking metformin not only showed an increase in the birth of new neurons, but they proved to become smarter by being better able to learn the location of a hidden platform in a standard maze test of spatial learning. The new evidence lends support to that promising idea in both mouse brains and human cells.

While it remains to be seen whether the very popular diabetes drug might already be serving as a brain booster for those who are now taking it, there are early hints the drug may have cognitive benefits for people with Alzheimer's disease. Scientists had speculated those improvements were the result of better diabetes control, Miller says, but it now appears that metformin may improve Alzheimer's symptoms by enhancing brain repair.

Miller says they now hope to test whether metformin might help repair the brains of those who have suffered brain injury due to trauma or radiation therapies for cancer.

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Diabetes drug helps brain growth, makes mice smarter

ScienceDaily (July 5, 2012) The widely used diabetes drug metformin comes with a rather unexpected and alluring side effect: it encourages the growth of new neurons in the brain. The study reported in the July 6th issue of Cell Stem Cell, a Cell Press publication, also finds that those neural effects of the drug also make mice smarter.

The discovery is an important step toward therapies that aim to repair the brain not by introducing new stem cells but rather by spurring those that are already present into action, says the study's lead author Freda Miller of the University of Toronto-affiliated Hospital for Sick Children. The fact that it's a drug that is so widely used and so safe makes the news all that much better.

Earlier work by Miller's team highlighted a pathway known as aPKC-CBP for its essential role in telling neural stem cells where and when to differentiate into mature neurons. As it happened, others had found before them that the same pathway is important for the metabolic effects of the drug metformin, but in liver cells.

"We put two and two together," Miller says. If metformin activates the CBP pathway in the liver, they thought, maybe it could also do that in neural stem cells of the brain to encourage brain repair.

The new evidence lends support to that promising idea in both mouse brains and human cells. Mice taking metformin not only showed an increase in the birth of new neurons, but they were also better able to learn the location of a hidden platform in a standard maze test of spatial learning.

While it remains to be seen whether the very popular diabetes drug might already be serving as a brain booster for those who are now taking it, there are already some early hints that it may have cognitive benefits for people with Alzheimer's disease. It had been thought those improvements were the result of better diabetes control, Miller says, but it now appears that metformin may improve Alzheimer's symptoms by enhancing brain repair.

Miller says they now hope to test whether metformin might help repair the brains of those who have suffered brain injury due to trauma or radiation therapies for cancer.

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Diabetes drug makes brain cells grow

June 28, 2012

Connie K. Ho for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Diabetes is a detrimental disease. In order to combat the illness, University of British Columbia (UBC) researchers conducted a study with an industry partner and discovered that stem cells can reverse Type 1 diabetes in mice.

The discovery leads the way for the development of innovative treatments of diabetes, which is caused by deficient production of insulin by the pancreas. Insulin allows glucose to be held by the bodys muscle, fat, and liver; in turn, its used as fuel for the body. Blindness, heart attack, kidney failure, nerve damage, and stroke are possible consequences of low insulin production. The research by the UBC investigators addressed these various issues. The study was led by Timothy Kieffer, a professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, as well as scientists from BetaLogics, the New Jersey-based division of Janssen Research & Development, LLC.

We are very excited by these findings, but additional research is needed before this approach can be tested clinically in humans, remarked Kieffer, a member of UBCs Life Sciences Institute, in a prepared statement.

The team of investigators is the first to demonstrate that human stem cell transplants can bring back insulin production and reverse diabetes in mice. They were able to re-create the feedback loop that allows insulin levels to automatically increase or decrease based on blood glucose levels. The results from their projects was recently published online on the website of the journal Diabetes.

Following the stem cell transplant, the diabetes mice were slowly taken off insulin, a procedure which was to mirror human clinical condition. Even if they were given copious amounts of sugar, the mice were able to continue healthy blood sugar levels three to four months later. The transplanted cells that were removed from the mice many months after the experiments also showed signs of normal insulin-producing pancreatic cells.

Essentially, the mice were cured of their diabetes by placing the body back in charge of regulated insulin production as it is in healthy, non-diabetics, Kieffer told the Vancouver Sun. It took about four to five months for the [stem] cells to become functional in our experiments and the mice were able to maintain good blood glucose levels even when fed a high-glucose diet, said Kieffer, a UBC professor in the department of cellular and physiological sciences.

Research still needs to be done to finalize details of the approach for diabetes treatment.

The studies were performed in diabetic mice that lacked a properly functioning immune system that would otherwise have rejected the cells. We now need to identify a suitable way of protecting the cells from immune attack so that the transplant can ultimately be performed in the absence of any immunosuppression, explained Kieffer in the statement.

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Diabetes Reversal In Mice Via Stem Cells

Canadian scientists were able to reverse diabetes in mice with a human stem cell transplant, igniting hopes for a cure for the widespread disease -- caused by the failure of the pancreas to produce enough insulin to stabilize blood sugar levels -- in humans.

A paper outlining the work, led by Timothy Kieffer of the University of British Columbia and conducted in partnership with New Jersey-based company BetaLogics, appeared in the journal Diabetes on Tuesday.

Diabetic mice were weaned off of insulin after receiving the pancreatic stem cell transplant, which restarted the cycle in which insulin production rises or falls based on blood sugar levels. Three to four months later, the mice could maintain healthy blood sugar levels even after being fed a lot of sugar.

"We are very excited by these findings, but additional research is needed before this approach can be tested clinically in humans," Kieffer said in a statement on Tuesday.

The researchers cautioned that their study used mice that had a suppressed immune system, the better to prevent rejection of the transplanted cells.

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"We now need to identify a suitable way of protecting the cells from immune attack so that the transplant can ultimately be performed in the absence of any immunosuppression," Kieffer said.

In 2009, a different team of researchers led by scientists from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil and Northwestern University reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that they were able to successfully reverse type 1 diabetes by injecting 8 patients with some of their own stem cells.

Some studies have shown that this kind of stem cell transplantation is only a temporary fix - after anywhere between six months to three years, the insulin-producing cells are again attacked by the patient's immune system.

SOURCE: Rezania et al. "Maturation of Human Embryonic Stem Cell-Derived Pancreatic Progenitors into Functional Islets Capable of Treating Pre-existing Diabetes in Mice." Diabetes 27 June 2012.

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Diabetes Reversed In Mice Thanks To Stem Cell Transplant

ScienceDaily (June 27, 2012) University of British Columbia scientists, in collaboration with an industry partner, have successfully reversed diabetes in mice using stem cells, paving the way for a breakthrough treatment for a disease that affects nearly one in four Canadians.

The research by Timothy Kieffer, a professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, and scientists from the New Jersey-based BetaLogics, a division of Janssen Research & Development, LLC, is the first to show that human stem cell transplants can successfully restore insulin production and reverse diabetes in mice. Crucially, they re-created the "feedback loop" that enables insulin levels to automatically rise or fall based on blood glucose levels. The study is published online June 27 in the journal Diabetes.

After the stem cell transplant, the diabetic mice were weaned off insulin, a procedure designed to mimic human clinical conditions. Three to four months later, the mice were able to maintain healthy blood sugar levels even when being fed large quantities of sugar. Transplanted cells removed from the mice after several months had all the markings of normal insulin-producing pancreatic cells.

"We are very excited by these findings, but additional research is needed before this approach can be tested clinically in humans," says Kieffer, a member of UBC's Life Sciences Institute. "The studies were performed in diabetic mice that lacked a properly functioning immune system that would otherwise have rejected the cells. We now need to identify a suitable way of protecting the cells from immune attack so that the transplant can ultimately be performed in the absence of any immunosuppression."

The research was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Stem Cell Network of Canada, Stem Cell Technologies of Vancouver, the JDRF and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research.

Diabetes results from insufficient production of insulin by the pancreas. Insulin enables glucose to be stored by the body's muscle, fat and liver and used as fuel; a shortage of insulin leads to high blood sugar that raises the risk of blindness, heart attack, stroke, nerve damage and kidney failure.

Regular injections of insulin are the most common treatment for the type 1 form of this disease, which often strikes young children. Although experimental transplants of healthy pancreatic cells from human donors have shown to be effective, that treatment is severely limited by the availability of donors.

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Diabetes reversed in mice using stem cells

Results from a new study suggest low doses of the diabetes drug metformin may effectively destroy pancreatic cancer stem cells, reducing the risk of tumor growth or recurrence.

Metformin has previously shown promise in reducing breast cancer risk, after researchers found women who took the drug were 25 percent less likely to develop breast cancer during their lifetimes than women who did not.

This study, conducted in mice, is the first to suggest metformin may actually target the root of certain cancers the tumor-initiating stem cells.

We didnt have any clue regarding the effects of metformin on pancreatic stem cancer cells, study researcher Dr. Christopher Heeschen, professor for experimental medicine at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid, Spain, told FoxNews.com. Its been implied in past studies of pancreatic cancer that patients who use metformin show better outcomes, but there have been no randomized trials yet.

When metformin was combined with a standard chemotherapy to treat pancreatic cancer, the drugs were able to eradicate both cancer stem cells and the differentiated cells that made up the tumor.

Novel strategies for treating pancreatic cancer have to be multi-modal, Heeschen explained. Right now, metformin is used as a second phase treatment, but I could also envision it as a first phase treatment but it has to be in combination with chemotherapy. I dont think the drug alone could wipe out the primary tumor, which is crucial.

In the study, it appeared that metformin merely arrested cancer cell growth in existing tumors, rather than destroying them.

Metformin targets the root of cancer, which has more of an effect on preventing cancer relapse, Heeschen said.

According to Heeschen, researchers are not yet certain as to why metformin appears to have cancer stem cell-killing properties, but from a pragmatic point of view, you see this striking response with a well-established drug thats safe I think its reasonable to move forward with clinical trials, he said.

One clinical trial is already in the recruitment phase, and Heeschen predicted results of the trial would be available by the end of the year.

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Diabetes drug may kill cancer stem cells, study says

Diabetes currently afflicts approximately 285 million people worldwide, about 6.4 percent of the global population. The World Health Organization projects that this number is set to rise to 366 million by the year 2030.

According to the American Diabetes Association, 1.9 million new cases of diabetes are diagnosed in people aged 20 years and older in 2010, an estimated 7.0 million Americans have undiagnosed diabetes, and another 79 million have pre-diabetes. In addition, approximately 25.8 million children and adults in the United States-8.3% of the population-have diabetes.

Several kinds of treatment for diabetes are currently available, but all of them present specific drawbacks to the patient. For example, insulin therapy can trigger everything from weight gain to hypoglycemia, and its administration must be constantly controlled and monitored by the patient. A novel approach to this problem is currently being pursued by a small biotech company named Orgenesis, which initiated its approach by asking the following question: What if a diabetes patient`s own cells-extracted from his or her own mature tissue-could be made to produce insulin, secreting the compound automatically when needed? This particular variety of cell therapy is a form of what has been dubbed "autologous cell replacement."

For years, the concept of harvesting stem cells and re-implanting them into one`s own body to regenerate organs and tissues has been embraced and researched in animal models. The treatment being developed by Orgenesis consists of several steps. First, a standard liver biopsy is taken from a diabetes patient in a clinical center and sent to a laboratory. In the lab, the liver cells are first propagated in vitro. Some of these cells are then manipulated with a therapeutic agent (i.e., the "master regulator" PDX-1 that governs pancreas development, or additional pancreatic transcription factors in adenovirus-vector) that converts a subpopulation of liver cells into different cells with pancreatic islet phenotype and function.

The therapeutic agent triggers a cascade of events, converting the cells into "autologous insulin-producing" (AIP) cells. These cells now act similarly to the beta cells that produce insulin in the pancreas of healthy individuals. Insulin is not only produced, but also stored and secreted in a glucose-regulated manner.

Back at the clinical center, the newly formed AIP cells are then transplanted in a standard infusion procedure back to the patient`s liver where they secrete insulin. Since the initial liver cells were taken from the patient himself or herself, there is no chance of rejection. Orgenesis has successfully tested its technology in mice, rats and pigs, and is working toward initiating clinical trials in humans.

The surprising capacity to activate pancreatic lineage in the liver was first demonstrated in mice by systemic PDX-1 administration using recombinant adenovirus gene delivery. PDX-1 plays a dual and central role in regulating both pancreas organogenesis in embryo and beta cell function in adults. The capacity of PDX-1 to direct pancreas development has been demonstrated in mature fully differentiated liver in vivo, both in mice and in Xenopus, possibly via a process called trans-differentiation. This describes an irreversible switch of one type of differentiated cell into another differentiated cell. AIP therapy seems to be safer than other options, as it does not alter the host genome but only alters the set of expressed genetic information that seems to be highly specific to the reprogramming protocol. In addition, no human organ donations or embryo-derived cells are required.

This form of therapy, if proven to be workable in clinical trials, would provide several advantages over other insulin-dependent diabetes therapies currently being studied. First, it frees the patient from daily involvement in the monitoring of blood glucose levels, numerous insulin injections and watching food intake and exercise. Indeed, the body itself is now continuously controlling blood glucose levels. In addition to avoiding the chance of autoimmune rejection, the procedure is only minimally invasive.

In summary, the use of adult human liver cells for generating functional insulin-producing tissue may pave the way to autologous implantations, thus allowing the diabetic patient to be the donor of his or her own insulin-producing tissue.

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Orgenesis' Sarah Ferber, Ph.D on Using a Diabetes Patient's Own Liver Cells as a Novel Source of Insulin

05-01-2012 12:09 Stem Cell treatments are in the news and sound great.

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Stem Cell Treatment vs Diet For Diabetes - Video

Not too long ago, George Bush vetoed his first bill after 5, 1/2 years of serving for our country as president. The bill he vetoed did not allow stem cell research to be funded properly by the government, while the many millions of people like me could be cured from the research. His main reasons for vetoing the bill had to do with cloning, and us being a Christian country

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Diabetes - Video