Diabetes is an ever-increasing problem in our society, one in six people are affected by diabetes worldwide. 10% of which have Type 1 diabetes, and advance treatment to help people with severe diabetes is to transplant insulin producing cells obtained from donor organs. However, donors are very scarce. In the light of this, stem cell differentiation shows a great promise in making an infinite amount of insulin producing stem cells to help people worldwide who suffer from diabetes.
Impact
Being able to produce stem cell-derived insulin producing cells would open up the road to insulin independence for all people world wide with type 1 diabetes. They would not have to struggle daily with regulating their blood sugar homeostasis, have more freedom in their life and not have to worry about possible severe complications. We are able to make these insulin producing cells, but we are still trying to improve, by incorporating blood vessels like they would have in the human body.
reNEW research
By using a lab-on-a-chip environment we are able to create a whole network of blood vessels derived from stem cells. In this environment we differentiate stem cells clusters into insulin producing cells, where they connect to the blood vessels in the chip, allowing us to study their interaction and function.
Image description
Stem cell islet in a lab-on-a-chip in which blood vessels are growing, to study the effect of the vasculature on the stem cell islet.
Credits
Maarten van Agen, Department of Internal Medicine, Islet lab, LUMC. Thanks to Ulgu Arslan and Valeria Orlova, Department of Anatomy and Embryology, LUMC.
