Orgenesis announces independent study published

Orgenesis announced the publication of an independent study which was published in the February issue of Journal of Stem Cell Research and Therapy. Insulin dependent diabetes is a multifactorial disorder that could be theoretically cured by functional pancreatic islets and autologous insulin producing cells, or AIP cells, implantation. Regenerative medicine approaches include the potential for growing tissues and organs in the laboratory and transplanting them when the body cannot heal itself. There are several obstacles that remain to be overcome in order to bring regenerative medicine approaches for diabetes closer to clinical implementation; the cells generated in-vitro are typically of heterogenic and immature nature and the site of implantation should be readily vascularized for the implanted cells to survive in vivo. The study was able to address these two limitations by analyzing the effect of co-implanting AIP cells with vasculature promoting cells in an accessible site such as subcutaneous. It further analyzed the effects of reconstituting the in-vivo environment in-vitro on the maturation and function of insulin producing cells. The study results show that co-implantation of mesenchymal stem cells, or MSCs, and endothelial colony forming cells, or ECFCs, with AIP cells led to doubling the survival rates and a three-fold increase in insulin production, in-vivo. ECFCs and MSCs co-culture, as well as conditioned media of co-cultures resulted in significant increased expression of pancreatic specific genes and an increase in glucose-regulated insulin secretion, compared with AIP cells alone. Mechanistically, the study demonstrated that ECFCs and MSCs co-culture increases the expression of CTGF and ACTIVINssa, that play a key role in pancreatic differentiation.

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