Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Pig to Rat Embryonic Transplant by Hammerman at Washington University School of Medicine

Press Release: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-pig-primate-transplants-diabetes.html

Note that the 15-Nov-2011 date refers to experiments on Monkeys that did not lead to a cure, but this press release also referred to previous experiments on rats that did lead to a cure for them.  Since I didn't have the rat cure before, I'm counting this as the rat cure.

Quotes:
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis transplanted clusters of embryonic pig cells destined to become insulin-producing islet cells into three diabetic rhesus macaques. The macaques “adopted” the pig cells as their own, without the need for powerful immune suppression drugs to prevent rejection, the researchers report in the current issue of Organogenesis.
The new study builds on earlier research in rats, reported by the same group last year in the American Journal of Pathology. In that study, the researchers used the same two-step approach to cure diabetes in rats. Unlike the macaques, rats that received both embryonic cell and islet cell transplants from the pigs could produce enough insulin to adequately control their blood sugar.

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