New source of insulin discovered

About 800,000 people in the United States have Type 1 diabetes, and about 30,000 new cases occur every year. Though transplants of insulin-producing cells from cadavers to diabetic patients has been shown to work well, only 3,000 suitable cadavers become available each year. And it takes two cadavers to obtain enough insulin cells for one transplant. With that problem in mind, researchers at Harvard-affiliated Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston coaxed cells that normally do not produce insulin into doing so. In fact, these cells are thrown away when insulin-producing islet cells are removed from donor bodies. The hope is that, in the next couple of years, what researchers are learning about getting non-insulin-producing cells to produce insulin will allow them to perform many more transplants.