New 3D Method Can Grow Miniature Pancreas: Help for Diabetes

There may be a new way to help fight diabetes. Scientists have successful developed an innovative 3D method to grow a miniature pancreas from progenitor cells. In the future, researchers may be able to produce a human pancreas, which could be used as a model to test new drugs.

An effective cellular therapy for diabetes depends on the production of sufficient quantities of functional beta-cells. Recent studies have enabled the production of pancreatic precursors, but efforts to expand these cells and differentiate them into insulin-producing beta-cells have proved to be a challenge. This new way to essentially grow a pancreas, though, might change that.

"This new method allows the cell material to take a three-dimensional shape enabling them to multiply more freely," said Anne Grapin-Botton, one of the researchers, in a news release. "It's like a plant where you use effective fertilizer, think of the laboratory like a garden and the scientist being the gardener."

The scientists found that pancreatic cells develop better in gel in three-dimensions than when they're attached at flattened at the bottom of a culture plate.  In fact, the researchers were able to grow the cells into 40,000 cells within just a week. However, these cells didn't thrive or develop if they were alone; it required at least four pancreatic cells to be in close proximity. Eventually, the cells transformed into cells that make either digestive enzymes or hormones like insulin. These cells then self-organized into branched pancreatic organoids that are similar to the pancreas.

"We think this is an important step towards the production of cells for diabetes therapy, both to produce mini-organs for drug testing and insulin-producing cells as spare parts," said Grapin-Botton in a news release. "We show that the pancreatic cells care not only about how you feed them but need to be grown in the right physical environment. We are now trying to adapt this method to human stem cells."

The findings are published in the journal Development.