Main Categories

Other Resources

Pages

OnlineEarnings Article Board » Health » Diabetes » Diabetes and Stem Cell Research
Welcome Guest

Diabetes and Stem Cell Research

Author: JuliaHanf.
Total views: 65
Word Count: 752
View PDF

Add2Netvouz

Stem cell research is an area that is quite controversial. Controversy in the wake of stem cell research and the fine distinctions of universal health care are a few of the subjects explored by health policy authorities and those living with life-changing illnesses such as diabetes and migraine. The largest issue involved, being where these cells originate from. The sources of stem cells are various. They can come from adults, the blood from the umbilical cord, and embryos.

The cure for diabetes may come from the findings of stem cell research. The American Diabetes Association advocates this kind of research, and has lobbied assiduously to procure financing. The American Diabetes Association is also combating restrictions on stem cell research relating to diabetes.

UC Berkeley and Stanford University are two institutions that are coming together on a venture to support collaboration among scientists who perform stem cell research.

Doctors, biologists, chemists, engineers and computer scientists from the two schools previously mentioned, are coming together to discuss their work and to share it with students and faculty.

The two schools are working hard and trying to dig deeper on the research about embryonic stem cell. This is what many scientists expect to present and give necessary information for cures and treatments of certain diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and diabetes.

To represent the teamwork, Stanford and UC Berkeley plan to build separate laboratories for researches who constantly visit the campuses and especially for those who spend their time off with friends and colleagues from other universities.

A biotechnology company, VistaGen Therapeutics, Inc., utilizes embryonic stem cell technologies to find and develop new drugs for diabetes, announced an expansive embryonic stem cell research union with Toronto's University Health Network, Canada's leading research hospital, and its stem cell research colleague, the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine.

The new alliance positions VistaGen to continue to influence the embryonic stem cell biology knowledge and leading-edge embryonic stem cell technologies of Dr. Gordon Keller, one of the world's leading stem cell researchers and the Director of the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine. VistaGen and Dr. Keller anticipate conducting research into advanced techniques to tell the difference between embryonic stem cells into mature cardiac, liver, and pancreatic beta-islet cells. This will improve VistaGen's industry-leading, in vitro biological systems and bioinformatics databases for prognostic toxicology applications.

The newly maintained research program is based on VistaGen's present strategic licenses to Dr. Keller's past embryonic stem cell intellectual property, and encompasses new embryonic stem cell-based research ventures.

VistaGen also is hoping to use the results of this research to develop the next generation of its adapted embryonic stem cell-based heart, liver and pancreatic beta-islet cell differentiation systems for discovering innovative drugs to treat heart disease, liver disease and diabetes.

Yet another group of researchers from the Spring Point Project has been leading efforts to provide a cure by injecting insulin-producing islet cells from pigs into diabetics. Research showed that transplanting healthy human islet cells in diabetics could turn around the disease. But due to a shortage of human donor organs access is limited to such cells.

Dr. Bernhard Hering, a world-renowned diabetes authority and scientific director of the Diabetes Institute for Immunology and Transplantation at the University of Minnesota, and his team ran test with pig islet cell transplants on monkeys and revealed that those cell transplants resulted in long-term diabetes reversal in the monkeys. A PowerPoint presentation incorporated a chart that showed unpredictable blood sugar counts in the monkeys achieving a level point. The application of pig parts in humans has been showing success in other areas, involving pig valves or bowels in transplants. Pig skin is already utilized in burn centers to replace human skin.

Owing to the fact that this is implanting alien cells into the body, those getting the transplants would have to receive medication to ensure they did not rebuff the cells. There may possibly be side effects, however right now it is not known how severe they may be, and the side effects may differ from patient to patient.

Sooner, the very first experiment on the different severities of diabetes will be clinically tried especially to those who cannot check their blood sugar levels constantly. These people are also those who experience different episodes of the disease.

Stem cell research will continue to be controversial for some time as long as the sources of the cells remain the same as they are today. If the stem cells can be derived from a source that the public is comfortable with, the controversy may decline.

About the Author

Julia Hanf author of the book How To Play the Diabetes Diet Game and Win Through a real life crisis Julia figured out how to live diabetes free. Visit http://www.yourdiabetescure.com and learn more about your solution for diabetes.