Here's another hope to curing diabetes.

Researchers from UTMB have engineered stem cells from umbilical cords to produce insulin. This exciting discovery will one day help cure type 1 diabetes patients by allowing them to grow their own insulin-producing cells for a damaged or defective pancreas.

This particular study took almost four years to accomplish, which the researchers have recently reported the results in the June issue of the medical journal Cell Proliferation (posted online last week).

Authors of the study cautioned however that this is just the first step in the long ladder of curing diabetes.

According to Dr. Randall J. Urban, senior author of the paper; professor and chair of internal medicine at UTMB and director of its Nelda C. and Lutcher H. J. Stark Diabetes Center:

"It doesn't prove that we're going to be able to do this in people - it's just the first step up the rung of the ladder.

This discovery tells us that we have the potential to produce insulin from adult stem cells to help people with diabetes."

However, working on stem cells from umbilical cords evades the moral and legal issues associated with working on embryonic stem cells.

Find more details from the full report.