Endocrine Abstracts

The morbidity and mortality associated with long-term diabetic complications continue to rise and will remain a major worldwide health problem in the coming years. Islet cell transplantation has recently emerged as one the most promising therapeutic approaches to improving glycometabolic control in diabetic patients and, in many cases, to obtaining insulin independence. Unfortunately, many flaws still persist that make it impossible for islet transplantation to become the gold...

Understanding how beta-cells maintain themselves in the adult pancreas is important for the development of strategies aimed at ameliorating or ideally curing different forms of diabetes. There has been much debate over whether beta-cell proliferation, as a means of self-renewal, predominates compared to the existence and differentiation of a pancreatic stem cell or progenitor cell population. Based on studies in the mouse, both principles can be demonstrated, although in norma...

Antibodies to CD3 are potent immunosuppressants now applied as non Fc-receptor (FcR) binding monoclonals.Data from our laboratory demonstrated that in NOD mice CD3 antibodies could reverse recent onset disease by restoring tolerance to beta cell antigens in a durable fashion. Thus in mice presenting full-blown diabetes, a five consecutive day treatment with low doses of the hamster anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody 145 2C11 or its F(ab)′2 fragments indu...

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