Pig Islet Cells May Help Solve Diabetes Problem

Filed in archive Developments , Research on April 3, 2007

Pig cells transplanted into a diabetic man in New Zealand 10 years ago are found to be still producing insulin at present.

The man, now age 41, suffers from type-1 diabetes and was injected with pig cells into his abdomen in 1996.

The process, called xenotransplantation, help reduced that man's insulin requirements by 34% for a year.

Type 1 diabetes is a condition when cells in a person's pancreas do not produce insulin and thus have no way of converting sugar to energy - resulting to abnormally high blood sugar levels.

Xenotransplantation, on the other hand, is any procedure that involves the transplantation, implantation, or infusion into a human recipient of either (a) live cells, tissues, or organs from a nonhuman animal source, or (b) human body fluids, cells, tissues or organs that have had ex vivo contact with live nonhuman animal cells, tissues or organs - as defined by the FDA.

According to Bob Elliot, medical director of Australia's Living Cell Technologies (LCT), the Biotech company responsible for the above xenotransplantation:

"A careful examination shows his diabetes control has been a lot better even 10 years after the transplant.

Tests, which became available only recently, showed that insulin detected in the man's blood were pig insulin, not human insulin."

These findings will pave way to future research that will determine if other diabetics will benefit from pig islets cells. Living Cell Technologies (LCT) hopes to conduct small-scale clinical trials in Russia and New Zealand in coming months to inject more diabetes patients.

[Findings appear in the March issue of the journal Xenotransplantation.]

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