Interspecies transplant works in first step for new diabetes therapy
Friday, July 12, 2013 - 11:30
in Health & Medicine
In the first step toward animal-to-human transplants of insulin-producing cells for people with type 1 diabetes, scientists have successfully transplanted islets, the cells that produce insulin, from one species to another. And the islets survived without immunosuppressive drugs. Scientists developed a new method that prevented rejection of the islets, a huge problem in transplants between species, called xenotransplantation.