• Question: Is it possible to use stem cells and grow specific cells that produce specific hormones, and later on use the hormones for medical conditions?

    Asked by maryam73 to Tomasz, Matt, Dave, Aoife, Anzy on 13 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Matthew Tomlinson

      Matthew Tomlinson answered on 13 Nov 2013:

      Hi maryam73

      Some research was published last year by a group from Israel who are trying to create pancreas cells from embryonic stem cells, these cells will hopefully go on to make pancreatic beta cells which produce insulin. This would fantastic because diabetes is becoming a major problem worldwide so if we can basically regrow the pancreas it would remove the need for pancreatic islet transplantation.

      There has been some other work on recreating endocrine glands, which produce hormones, but at the moment this is still quite challenging. It may be possible to engineer cells genetically so they produce hormones of choice but I’m not sure how that would work.

      I hope this helps!

    • Photo: David Christensen

      David Christensen answered on 20 Nov 2013:

      That’s an interesting question maryam73!

      As Matt has said, scientists are trying to use stem cells to make cells that can make hormones, but it is very difficult – particularly in making sure that those cells only make the hormones when they are supposed to make them.

      At the moment we can make hormones like insulin by genetically engineering bacteria so that they produce human insulin. This means that scientists can grow up huge amounts of a bacteria that is specially made to be harmless and to produce a lot of human insulin. This insulin can be collected and then given to patients to treat diabetes. This is much easier than making the cells that could be transplanted into the patient to make the insulin inside them.

      In the long term we would hope to make the pancreatic cells that make insulin using stem cells because diabetes is a difficult disease to control using insulin and a lot of diabetics have problems in learning when to inject themselves with insulin and how much to use. If we could give them new working pancreas cells to produce insulin when needed, their lives would be much easier. The only problem is that this is too difficult for us to do at the moment. Hopefully we will be able to do this in the next 10-20 years!

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