 Diabetes And Stem Cell Research
Why should a diabetic feel compelled to watch for information about stem cell research? The findings from that research could one day yield the development of what once seemed an impossible dream. The findings from that research have the potential to produce an actual cure for diabetes.
The taking of insulin injections and the wearing of an insulin pump can not rid a diabetic patient of dependence on insulin. No amount of insulin can restore to the diabetic the ability to produce his or her own insulin. The body’s failure to produce insulin gives rise to the condition known as diabetes. A true “cure” for diabetes demands creation of a way by which every diabetic has the ability to make his or her own insulin.
Medicine learned in the 20th Century just how the body develops specialized cells. Medical researchers found that the embryo has stem cells, undifferentiated cells. During the transformation of the embryo into a fetus, those stem cells are designed to carry-out a specific function. In other words, the once pluripotent embryonic stem cells change into cells with the ability to perform a highly specialized function.
When a baby develops normally, some of the baby’s stem cells become cells that can produce insulin. Those insulin producing cells collect in the baby’s pancreas. After the discovery of embryonic stem cells, some medical researchers longed for a way to mimic nature. They wanted to have the ability to change stem cells into insulin making cells.
In 1998, James Thompson, a researcher in Wisconsin announced that he had found a way of obtaining stem cells from human embryos. Thompson’s announcement followed creation of the first cloned animal, the sheep called “Dolly.” Thompson gave medical researchers a way to use embryonic stem cells for creation of any of the more than 200 cell types in the human body.
Thompson has now commented on the newest finding in the field of stem cell research. Medical researchers at the University of Wisconsin have said that they know how to reprogram skin cells, thus causing those skin cells to behave like stem cells. Thompson has stated that the transformed skin cells “can do everything that the embryonic stem cells do.”
What does Thompson’s statement mean for the diabetic? Thompson’s statement suggests that medicine does not need to rely on embryonic stem cells in order to grow human tissue, tissue that could be used to replace any tissue that was full of damaged cells. Thompson’s statement pointed to a second possible way for growing insulin producing cells. His statement brightened hopes for a way to cure diabetes.
At the same time, news about Thompson’s technique, a technique that relied on embryonic stem cells, uncovered differences in thinking. Some researchers wanted to use embryonic stem cells to grow cells with the ability to make insulin. Researchers saw the creation of such cells as a way to develop a cure for diabetes.
Groups who advocated for the right of the unborn opposed suggestions for the use of embryonic stem cells in medical research. Such groups saw the life of the unborn child as sacred. They could not agree to the destruction of an embryo in order to obtain embryonic stem cells, even if such cells were to be used for creation of a new medical cure.
News that skin cells could be transformed into stem cells seemed to offer a resolution to the controversy, the controversy over the ethical implications of using embryonic stem cells in medical research. Transformed skin cells appeared to provide society with a way to quiet the stem cell debate. The news about the potential for transformation of skin cells also gave smaller labs a possible way to enter the field of stem cell research.
A laboratory needs to have very sophisticated equipment in order to extract stem cells from an embryo. Not every lab has the resources that would allow it to obtain such equipment. Skin cells, on the other hand, are not as difficult to obtain. Even a moderately sized laboratory can isolate and grow skin cells.
Creation of stem cells from skin cells hands to medical researchers an ability that they did not have, when they felt it necessary to use only embryonic stem cells. Creation of stem cells from skin cells gives medicine a way to create customized cells. In other words, medicine now appears able to use the skin from a diabetic to create insulin-producing cells, cells that would not be “foreign” to the existing cells in that diabetic.
Transformation of skin cells into stem cells gives medicine a way to copy the genetic make-up of cells in any patient’s body. Perfection of that technique could give to every diabetic a group of insulin-producing cells that would not be rejected by that diabetic.
Diabetics can take heart from the observations made by Thompson. Thompson views the transformation of skin cells in this light: “more clinically relevant than embryonic stem cells.” That mention of clinical relevance speaks directly to the role that transformed skin cells could play in the advancement of stem cell research.
Yet no diabetic should hold his or her breath, waiting for creation of a cure, a cure based on the creation of cells that can produce insulin. Medical researchers must still iron out some of the wrinkles in the procedure employed for transformation of skin cells into stem cells. Medical researchers must, for example, find a way to weed out from the skin cells any cells that could contain “bad” genes, genes that might encourage growth of a cancerous tumor.
Once medical researchers find a way to weed out such skin cells, then researchers might commence a clinical trial of laboratory-made cells. Some of those clinical trials might use insulin producing cells. If the results of those clinical trials were to support use of transformed skin cells, then diabetics would have real reason to hope for a cure.
The transformed skin cells could be used to make insulin producing cells, and those cells could be put inside the body of a diabetic patient. | 
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