Combetic Family Forum:

Third Day Resources now has a secure reliable source of Combetic.
Please go to our new website to order. The price increased to $37
because of the devalued American dollar. You can now tell your
friends about Combetic.

Here is the latest news about Stem Cell Therapy:

An international team of researchers has finally managed to locate
stem cells in the pancreas -- in mice, at least and could pave the
way for dramatic new therapies for diabetes, namely the regeneration
of beta cells so the body could once again produce its own insulin.

If confirmed in humans, it could mean new therapies. Until now,
scientists had all but abandoned hopes that the pancreas made its own
stem cells because they had failed to find evidence to support the
theory.

"This is the first conclusive evidence that there are stem cells in
the pancreas, but any potential benefit is a very long way away,"
said Juan Dominguez-Bendala, director of Stem Cell Development for
Translational Research at the Diabetes Research Institute of the
University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

"If this kind of cell and their progenitors with a capacity to divide
exist in the pancreas of man, and if we can identify the factors that
are responsible to induce their proliferation and differentiation,
then these latter processes might be stimulated in vitro but also, by
noninvasive means, in vivo," said senior study author Harry Heimberg,
an associate professor at the Diabetes Research Center of Vrije
Universiteit Brussel in Belgium.

Diabetes is primarily a failing of the pancreatic beta cells to
produce insulin. Beta cells are one of several types of cells making
up clusters of cells called the islets of Langerhans. Insulin is a
hormone that moves blood sugar from the bloodstream to the cells,
where it is used as energy.

Islet-cell transplantation, in which islets are transferred from one
person to another, is performed today but is limited in scope because
of a shortage of donors, according to the study.

The very existence of pancreatic stem cells is controversial. A
recent study out of Harvard found that the major source of new beta
cells in adult mice was preexisting beta cells, not stem cells. The
finding reduced the urgency to track down pancreatic stem cells.

"If stem cells didn't contribute, what was the point," said Dominguez-
Bendala.

For this study, Heimberg and his colleagues cut off the duct that
drains digestive enzymes from the pancreas in mice. Within two weeks,
the number of beta cells in the pancreas doubled. Not only did the
number of beta cells increase, the mice started producing more
insulin.

"When damaged a specific way, it triggered stem cells" production,
Dominguez-Bendala said.

The newly identified stem cells were almost identical to embryonic
beta cell progenitors. In fact, the gene Neurogenin 3 (Ngn3), which
plays a role in embryonic development of the pancreas, is also
involved in the formation of these new beta cells, the researchers
said.

"This is a model of regeneration no one has tested before," Dominguez-
Bendala said. "From a basic science point of view, it's very
exciting. It opens the door to potential therapies. If we could
trigger regeneration, that would be fantastic."

"This demonstrates a stem cell repair mechanism in the pancreas that,
if we understand it more, then we can help develop more cures with
either transplantation or with drugs that can increase the body's own
stem cells and beta cells," said Paul Sanberg, director of the
University of South Florida Center for Aging and Brain Repair in
Tampa.

The findings are published in the Jan. 25 issue of the journal Cell.
Juan Dominguez-Bendala, Ph.D., director, Stem Cell Development for
Translational Research, Diabetes Research Institute, and assistant
professor, surgery, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine,
Miami.

=========================================

To Your Health and Happiness,
Rob