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So during research, my professor mentioned a type of stem cell, a name that was like 5-6 words long, that can be used to treat diabetes by creating an "artificial organ". That hypothetical organ would then be used to create insulin or treat diabetes using other methods.

However I can not remember that name for my life...

This community may not be able to assist me much, as I am aware of the many types of stem cells. This is all the information I have access to, and I cannot contact my professor until the weekend, so it would be great if I could get some prior knowledge about these stem cells; I just need to know the name.....

Thanks in advance.

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  • $\begingroup$ cool, well I learnt a bit about current stem cell research. insulin is from the pancreas. wikis sais: Pancreatic progenitor cells are multipotent stem cells originating from the developing fore-gut endoderm which have the ability to differentiate into the lineage specific progenitors responsible for the developing pancreas. ............ express a transcription factor called PDX1 (Pancreatic and duodenal homeobox 1). This transcription factor has been shown to give rise to the multipotent stem cell lineages contributing to the endocrine, exocrine and ductal cells of the pancreas $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 2, 2017 at 17:32

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Human Embyronic Stem Cells (hESC) can be programmed to differentiate into a number of different types of tissue depending on the signals you give or withhold.

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Source: BioTime

The company Viacyte is actually developing a technology based on hESC that can be used to rescue loss of function in type-1 diabetes, just as an example. Their process takes hESC to pancreatic endoderm after about a month. The pancreatic endoderm has the capacity to differentiate into beta cells, ductal cells and so forth. He could have also been talking about human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC). Like embryonic stem cells, these can differentiate into "anything," but are derived differently.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you so much, he mentioned hIPSC... ill make to read more on it, Thanks again. $\endgroup$
    – user37639
    Commented Nov 2, 2017 at 20:33

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