Anna Pehe* and Christina Baechle
For those with type 1 diabetes, islet transplantation is a promising treatment that may offer real-time metabolic regulation of glucose and eventually lead to insulin independence. However, there are two significant issues that must be resolved: (1) poor immune responses, such as inflammation brought on by the islet isolation/transplantation method, recurrent autoimmunity, and outright rejection, might result in graft loss; and (2) a lack of organ donors. In animal models, a number of gene therapy strategies and pharmaceutical medications have been shown to increase the longevity of pancreatic islet grafts; nevertheless, the human applications require more research. The ex vivo production of insulin-secreting cells from various sources of stem/ progenitor cells has also emerged as an appealing possibility in regenerative medicine as a substitute for pancreatic beta-cell replacement therapy. This paper reviews current approaches to generate functional insulin-secreting cells from stem/progenitor cells and focuses on the genetic modification of islets during transplantation therapy.
