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00091: Human pancreatic stem cell line to treat insulin dependent diabetes and to screen for pancreatic disease or cancer therapeutics and diagnostics.

Technology Categories

Biotechnology, Medical, Pharmaceutical

Keywords

Diabetes, Stem Cell, Therapy, Pancreatic, Malignancy

Background

Globally, around 150 million adults suffered from diabetes in 2000 and it is projected to double by 2025. The U.S. market for diabetes monitoring products and therapy is $11 billion annually and the U.S. demand for these products and therapies is expected to grow 9.5% annually through 2008. Although cell therapy technology is still very new, the usefulness of these technologies is considered an important trend. The U.S. pancreatic cancer drug market is expected to grow to $1.1 billion by 2013. Pancreatic adenocarcinoma, the fifth leading cancer-related cause of death with the highest fatality rate, is aggressive and resistant to conventional therapy. There is a substantial need for the development of new treatments for patients with pancreatic cancer.

Description

This invention is a pluripotent human pancreatic ductal cell line, immortalized with human papilloma virus (HPV) genes E6 and E7 that can produce insulin for use as a diabetic treatment or transplantation therapy. It can also be used to screen for a chemical's ability to induce pancreatic stem cell differentiation or malignancy, or to identify biomarkers for earlier diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

Benefits

  • Unlimited source of human insulin producing cells: This cell line is immortalized and can be expanded to produce a large quantity of cells using commercial cell production techniques, negating the need to isolate beta cells from a limited supply of harvested human or animal pancreata.
  • Human source of insulin producing cells: A human tissue source eliminates the cross reactions that occur when animal derived beta cells are used in humans or human model systems.
  • Easy to cultivate: These cells can be maintained or propagated as immature stem cells and induced to differentiate into insulin producing cells when needed.
  • Less expensive: The immortalized stem cells provide a less expensive means to provide human insulin producing cells than the current process of isolating islet cells from human and animal pancreata.
  • Fully functional system: The differentiated insulin producing cells have the ability to produce and secrete insulin in a regulated manner and form three dimensional organoids, which provides a valuable in vitro tool for pancreatic research and development.

Applications

This invention would be developed by pharmaceutical and biotechnical companies into a cell based therapy for diabetes, a screening test for pancreatic mutagenic or carcinogenic compounds and cancer biomarkers, and an in vitro model system for pancreatic research. The end users would be physicians and corporate or academic scientific researchers.

Development Status

A protoype was developed and proof of concept was demonstrated in vitro.

IP Protection Status

US 2003/0003088 A1 (filed Apr 30, 2002)

Additional Information

2003 Abstact of inventor's article on gap junctional intercellular communication in immortalized human pancreatic ductal epithelial cells with stem cell characteristics.

2008 Abstract on review article on islet cell transplantation.

Medline plus website on insulin dependant diabetes.

Contact

For more information about this technology, please contact Mary Mayer at 517-355-2186 or mlmayer@msu.edu.