Engineering islets: lessons from stem cells and embryonic development

The attempts to understand pancreatic cell-type specification and apply this information to direct the differentiation of insulin-producing cells from various sources have produced significant advances in the past few years. The steady progress of embryonic stem and stem/progenitor cell isolation, growth, and manipulation, combined with new technologies for genetic manipulations and lineage tracing and a greater understanding of the endogenous factors required for beta-cell differentiation and expansion, has made the identification of alternative sources of insulin-producing cells a possibility. These fields are still young but continued collaborative efforts between researchers of many different scientific disciplines will allow clinicians to achieve the common goal of generating alternative sources of beta cells for therapeutic purposes.