Their findings have been published in Cell Stem Cell in a paper titled “Reconstruction of endocrine subtype-complete human pluripotent stem cell-derived islets with capacity for hypoglycemia protection in vivo.”

Transplantation of pluripotent stem cell-derived islets (PSC-islets) represents a promising therapy for restoring blood sugar control in diabetes, owing to the self-renewal and differentiation capacities of PSCs, overcoming the problem of scarcity of cadaveric islets required for islet transplantation.

This research has succeeded for the first time in the challenging task of reconstruction of PSC-islets comprising all five (α, β, δ, ε, and γ) endocrine subtypes.