Surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital, US, have developed a bio-artificial matrix that could serve as a scaffold for pancreatic islets and supportive stem cells.
The researchers found that the pancreatic islets survived longer in the artificial matrix than in the conventional transplantation sites such as the liver, and the islets also produced higher amounts of insulin when the glucose levels were low.
The technology can help eliminate the need for daily insulin injections, they added.
The researchers developed the matrix by removing cells from pancreatic tissue using biological detergents. This was seeded with donor islet cells and stem cells, and the entire construct was transplanted into an animal model.
Primary investigator Dr Claudius Conrad said that the more difficult aspects of the concept had already been accounted for.
"I am very excited about the prospect of bioengineering an endocrine pancreas that could cure patients with insulin-dependent diabetes," Conrad said.
