Pancreatic islet cell development and regeneration

This review will discuss recent advances in understanding mouse and human pancreatic islet cell development, novel concepts related to β cell dysfunction and improved approaches for replenishing β cells to treat diabetes.

Considerable knowledge about pancreatic islet development and function has been gained using model systems with subsequent validation in human tissues. Recently, several rodent studies have revealed that differentiated adult islet cells retain remarkable plasticity and can be converted to other islet cell types by perturbing their transcription factor profiles. Furthermore, significant advances have been made in the generation of β-like cells from stem cell populations. Therefore, the generation of functionally mature β cells by the in-situ conversion of non-β cell populations or by the directed differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells could represent novel mechanisms for replenishing β cells in diabetic patients.

The overall conservation between mouse and human pancreatic development, islet physiology and etiology of diabetes encourages the translation of novel β cell replacement therapies to humans. Further deciphering the molecular mechanisms that direct islet cell regeneration, plasticity and function could improve and expand the β cell replacement strategies for treating diabetes.