📢Human #Pluripotent #Stem Cell-Derived #Pancreatic Islet Cells #underthemicroscope now #online in the latest issue of ISCT Telegraft
✍️Natasha Hui Jin Ng, PhD
✍️Adrian Kee Keong Teo, PhD
🔗isctglobal.org/telegrafthub/b…

🤔What?🧐pancreatic #betacells regulate glucose levels in the body. Diabetes occurs when these are destroyed, rendering an inability to produce insulin. Thus, #betacells are most often the focus of cell differentiation protocols aiming at new therapies.
🔗diabetesatlas.org

🤔Why?🧐Type 1 #diabetes is a lifechanging, early onset disease (<20 yo). Patients require life-long insulin injections facing risk of complications even with compliance to treatment. Islet replacement therapy is a promising curative form of treatment.
🔗pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32627352/

Telegraft ISCT 🤔Who?🧐Companies @Viacyte and Vertex Pharmaceuticals have progressed their hPSC-derived pancreatic cells to first-in-human clinical trials. Recent news from Prof. Hongkui Deng's lab at Peking University reported initiation of early phase clinical trials for islet cells from hiPSC.
📷: Beatrice Ho

🤔When?🧐 #pluripotentstemcell differentiated pancreatic islet cells enabled in vitro modelling of diabetes. The early clinical trials with hPSC-pancreatic cells showed limited functional outcomes but recent trials with fully-differentiated cells appear to provide more promise.

🤔Where?🧐Several countries are actively pushing the frontiers in R&D towards the authorisation of hPSC-derived pancreatic cell based therapies (i.e. USA, Europe, Japan, China, Singapore), both in academic labs and commercial players.

🤔How?🧐 #Source and #quality of the starting #cellbank are major factors affecting the cell manufacturing process. Another challenge relates to managing the immunogenicity of cells in allogeneic therapy.
🔗pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34349281/

ISCT Telegraft 🤔Did you know that… 🧐Primary human #pancreatic islets are known to contain 40-60% #betacells , 20-40% #alphacells , 5-15% #deltacells and a small abundance of other minor cell types (with cell composition differing across different individuals).
🔗isctglobal.org/telegrafthub/b…