The most recent game changer in diabetes research might not be a new drug or a treatment. Rather, it could be a system of human blood veins virtually identical to the ones right now transporting blood all through your body.
What makes these blood vessels unique is that they are the initial ones grown in a lab – and they’ve just generated a new lead in diabetes treatment.
At the point when a person has diabetes, their blood vessels show exhibit an abnormal thickening of what’s known as the”basement membrane.”
This thickening impairs the transfer of oxygen and nutrients to cells and tissues, which can cause aplethora of health problems ranging from kidney failure and blindness to heart attacks and strokes.
In a study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, specialists from the University of British Columbia detail how they could coax stem cells into growing into human blood vessel “organoids,” the term used for three-dimensional, lab-grown cellular systems that mimic the characteristics of organs or tissues.
They then placed the lab-grown blood vessels in a petri dish designed to mimic a “diabetic environment.”
“strikingly similar” to the thickening seen in patients with diabetes, according to researcher Reiner Wimmer.
The scientists at that point went on the hunt for a chemical compound that could prevent this thickening in their lab-grown blood vessels and found one: an inhibitor of the enzyme γ-secretase.
The group’s examination recommends that restraining γ-secretase in patients could be a useful diabetes treatment, yet as indicated by scientist Josef Penninger, there are potential uses for lab–grown blood vessels far beyond diabetes research.
“Being able to build human blood vessels as organoids from stem cells is a game changer,” Penninger said in a press release. “Every single organ in our body is linked with the circulatory system.”
“This could potentially allow researchers to unravel the causes and treatments for a variety of vascular diseases,” he continued, “from Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular diseases, wound healing problems, stroke, cancer and, of course, diabetes.”
