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The latest change in diabetes research may not be a new drug or a new therapy. Instead, it could be a system of human blood vessels virtually identical to those that currently carry blood throughout your body.
The peculiarity of these blood vessels is that they are the first developed in a laboratory – and that they have already generated a new lead in the treatment of diabetes.
When a person is diabetic, his blood vessels often show an abnormal thickening of what is called the "basement membrane".
This thickening impedes the transfer of oxygen and nutrients to cells and tissues, which can lead to a plethora of health problems ranging from kidney failure to blindness to heart attacks and accidents. cerebrovascular diseases.
In a study published in the journal Nature Researchers at the University of British Columbia on Wednesday explained how they managed to convince stem cells to become "organoids" of human blood vessels, a term used to refer to three-dimensional cellular systems developed in the laboratory that reproduce the features of organs or tissues. .
They then placed laboratory-grown blood vessels in a petri dish designed to mimic a "diabetic environment".
They found that the basement membrane thickened "surprisingly similar" to the thickening seen in diabetic patients, according to researcher Reiner Wimmer.
The researchers then went in search of a chemical compound capable of preventing this thickening in their laboratory-grown blood vessels and found one: an inhibitor of the γ-secretase enzyme.
The team study suggests that the inhibition of γ-secretase in patients could be a useful diabetes treatment, but according to researcher Josef Penninger, there are potential uses for developed blood vessels in the laboratory far beyond diabetes research.
"Being able to build human blood vessels in the form of organoids from stem cells is changing things," Penninger said in a statement. "Every organ in our body is linked to the circulatory system."
"This could potentially allow researchers to unravel the causes and treatments of various vascular diseases" from Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular disease, wound healing problems, stroke, cancer and, of course, , diabetes. "
This article was originally published by Futurism. Read the original article.
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