부산대학교 도서관

Transplantation cure of diabetes. Transplantation of insulin producing tissue is an effective therapy for restoring normal blood glucose levels in type-1 diabetes mellitus but its use is limited by low number of suitable brain-dead organ donors and the need for long-term immunosuppressive therapy. Organ pancreas transplantation is currently performed mostly in combination with a kidney transplant in patients suffering from end-stage diabetic nephropathy. Pancreas transplantation alone or transplantation of isolated pancreatic islets may be indicated for patients with exceptionally labile diabetes. Though the time for stem cell based diabetes therapy has still not come, many experimental studies show promise to generate in the laboratory an alternative source of insulin producing cell lines either from embryonic or adult stem cells which would be available for diabetes treatment in larger scale.