[morrisma]

This seems a promising approach to protect transplanted cells from the immune system.

Can a seaweed wrap help beat diabetes?
By PAT HAGAN - More by this author »

Last updated at 01:38am on 19th February 2008

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Seaweed could hold the secret to curing diabetes. An ingredient extracted from it is being wrapped around insulin-producing cells taken from pigs and injected into patients' bodies.


The jelly-like substance, called alginate, effectively hides the pig cells from the immune system, so it does not destroy them once they are injected.

This allows the animal cells to carry on producing insulin, potentially banishing the need for patients to inject themselves with the hormone up to four times a day.

Diabetes affects around 1.8million people in the UK. It develops when the pancreas, which produces insulin, packs up completely or does not make enough to help cells absorb glucose from the blood.

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It's a wrap: Alginate from seaweed is wrapped round insulin-producing cells taken from pigs and injected intyo patients' bodies. Some sufferers have been 'cured'

Doctors have tried in the past to transplant whole human pancreases, but this has proved very difficult and there is a shortage of donated organs.

Instead, attention has turned to harvesting insulin-producing islet cells from healthy donors and injecting them into the patient's liver, where they start to make insulin.

This month saw the announcement of a £7million nationwide transplant programme for diabetics.

The scheme, funded by the Department of Health, will see more patients benefiting from an experimental treatment.

This involves the harvesting of islet cells, from a healthy donor pancreas and injecting them into patients who cannot produce their own insulin.

Around a dozen patients in Britain have had the treatment so far, with some being "cured" and no longer needing to inject insulin.

But the huge quantity of cells needed, around 300,000 per patient, means up to four matching donors have to be found for just one transplant.

The treatment also means a lifetime of immuno-suppressant drugs to avoid rejection of the cells by the body.

An alternative could be the use of socalled xenotransplants using organs or cells from animals, such as pigs on humans.

Insulin-producing pig cells are a close match for human ones and are in plentiful supply. But they still get picked up by the body's defence system as a foreign invader.

Now experts at San Diego-based firm MicroIslet Inc have developed the seaweed coating as a potential solution.

Alginate is already widely used in areas such as wound dressings because the body seems to recognise it as friendly rather than foreign.

Millions of pig cells are coated in it before being injected into the abdomen. Once inside the body, they continue to release insulin and there is no need for a anti-rejection drugs.

Mexican researchers are exploring a similar technique where the cells harvested from baby piglets are buried in the body.

The cells are encased in a metal tube that allows insulin to escape, but does not allow immune system cells to get in and destroy the pig tissue.

Scientists behind the experiments claim a number of children have already been cured of their diabetes using this technique.

Jo Brodie, a spokeswoman for Diabetes UK, said the use of animal insulin cells was an area of great interest.

"This research may have huge potential. A major limiting factor in the use of either a whole pancreas or islet cell transplant is the lack of available donor organs.

"In addition, transplants of any kind mean a life-time of anti-rejection drugs.

"But there are serious ethical issues around xenotransplants and they are not currently undertaken in the UK."


Mike

[Alice]

Interesting. I thought it was kind of funny the article assumed we only take "up to four injections" a day...I can double that easily! Oh, well.