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Diabetes and Stem Cell Research

By: Julia Hanf Stem cell study is a field that is very arguable. Debate in the path of stem cell study and the characteristics of general health care are a small number of of the topics looked at by health policy experts and individuals dealing with life-altering diseases like diabetes and migraine. The biggest subject concerned, is the origins of these cells. The supplies of stem cells are assorted. They can originate from adults, umbilical cord blood harvesting, and embryos.

Diabetes treatments and cure depend on the results of the research on stem cells. The American Diabetes Association has been very supportive on these researches and has been cooperating by means of financial support. Recently, there have been many protests on the researches done in stem cells and the American Diabetes Association has tried its best to eliminate and stop these protests.

Moreover, there are also some universities such as Stanford University and UC Berkeley that voiced out their support on this research by motivating scientists who are involve in the 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.

Both institutions are extremely involved in embryonic stem cell research that scientists foresee will offer managements or cures for diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

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 fresh union places VistaGen to be able to continue to utilize the embryonic stem cell biology information and innovative embryonic stem cell know-how of Dr. Gordon Keller, one of the world's foremost stem cell researchers and the Director of the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine. VistaGen and Dr. Keller look forward to carrying out research into advanced techniques to differentiate between embryonic stem cells into mature cardiac, liver, and pancreatic beta-islet cells. This will progress VistaGen's industry-leading, in vitro biological systems and bioinformatics databases for prognostic toxicology submissions.

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 together with his group worked on islet cell transplants from pigs to monkeys. They found out that the cell transplanted to monkey turned out to be a long-term diabetes reversal. Dr. Hering presented presentation in PowerPoint. This presentation included a chart that showed inconsistent counts in the blood sugar up to a certain level in monkeys. This research most especially the use of pig has proved very useful. Some of the areas shown are the bowels in transplants and pig valves. Accordingly, the skin of the pigs can also be used to replace the skin of the human.

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.

Sometime in the near future, possibly as early as 2009, the first clinical experiments will be scheduled for those with the most severe form of diabetes who are not capable of monitoring their blood sugar levels and can experience sudden blackouts or other episodes.

The controversy on the research about stem cells are yet to end until the status will be different from the present. The issues and controversies may only end if the stem cells will be developed from a specific source.

Article Source: http://www.lifeweightloss.com

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 www.yourdiabetescure.com and learn more about your solution for diabetes.

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