The Harvard University scientists who developed the technique believe that someday doctors might be able to treat diseases like diabetes, Parkinson's disease and heart disease using the patient's own cells without turning to stem cells taken from embryos.
The experiment, which was performed in mice, involved reprogramming cells in the pancreas that normally do not produce insulin so that they began producing the sugar-regulating hormone, thus opening the way to a host of possibilities, scientists said.
In the new method, described Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers injected three genes, which had been selected from a list of 1,100 genes, into exocrine cells. Exocrine cells make up about 95 percent of the cells in the pancreas.
The genes, known as transcription factors, successfully reprogrammed the exocrine cells to become insulin-producing beta cells, which make up about 1 percent of the cells in the pancreas. It is the beta cells that first die when attacked by the body's own immune system, leading to type one diabetes.
The reprogrammed cells began producing insulin and appeared to be responding (making insulin) to glucose levels in the blood.
In 2007, scientists were able to genetically reprogram human skin cells and obtain cells that acted just like embryonic stem cells. Their method found a way to dispense with the need for embryos altogether and use a patient's own cells.
However, Douglas Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and a researcher with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, said his approach might be used to treat both type one diabetes and insulin-dependent type two diabetes.
He also cautioned that the approach is not ready for people and that more research is needed in this field.
