Engineered pancreatic tissues could lead to better transplants for diabetics

Medical Xpress | Kevin Hattori
Technion researchers have built pancreatic tissue with insulin-secreting cells, surrounded by a three-dimensional network of blood vessels. The engineered tissue could pave the way for improved tissue transplants to treat diabetes

The tissue created by Professor Shulamit Levenberg of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and her colleagues has some significant advantages over traditional transplant material that has been harvested from healthy pancreatic tissue.

The insulin-producing cells survive longer in the engineered tissue, and produce more insulin and other essential hormones, Levenberg and colleagues said. When they transplanted the tissue into diabetic mice, the cells began functioning well enough to lower blood sugar levels in the mice.

Transplantation of islets, the pancreatic tissue that contains hormone-producing cells, is one therapy considered for people with type 1 diabetes, who produce little or no insulin because their islets are destroyed by their own immune systems. But as with many tissue and organ transplants, donors are scarce, and there is a strong possibility that the transplantation will fail.

The well-developed blood vessel network built into the engineered tissue is key to its success, the researchers concluded. The blood vessels encourage cell-to-cell communication, by secreting growth hormones and other molecules, that significantly improve the odds that transplanted tissue will survive and function normally.

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