[ad_1]
Valuable ships
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.
Organoid employee
When a person has diabetes, his blood vessels often have an abnormal thickening of what is called the "basement membrane." This thickening prevents the transfer of oxygen and nutrients to cells and tissues, which can cause a multitude of health problems ranging from kidney failure. and blindness to heart attacks and strokes.
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 "astonishingly similar" to the thickening observed in diabetic patients, according to the 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.
Beyond diabetes
The team's 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 of laboratory-developed blood vessels well 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 press release. "Every organ in our body is linked to the circulatory system."
Source link
