Manama: A potentially significant breakthrough in the treatment of diabetes has been made by a team of Qatar-based scientists. The scientists at Qatar Biomedical Research Institute (QBRI), in collaboration with researchers at Imperial College London, have reportedly discovered a new way to instruct isolated stem cells in a laboratory setting to secrete insulin when it is needed to maintain the correct sugar level in the bodys circulation.

Diabetes is a world-wide health problem, and it is especially prevalent in Qatar, Dr Abdul Ali Haoudi, the Executive Director of QBRI and a co-author of the study, said. People with diabetes face serious medical complications, including heart disease and kidney failure. This discovery has the potential to reduce this burden by harnessing the bodys own stem cells to secrete insulin as needed to maintain proper blood sugar levels in the body. This research represents the first promising steps toward a new treatment, but it will need to go through the clinical validation before it is declared a viable therapy, he said.

The findings have just been published in Molecular Therapy-Nucleic Acids, the official journal of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy.

Dr Nagy Habib, Scientific Director of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Centre at QBRI, is the lead investigator of the team of scientists at QBRI and Imperial College London that made the discovery.

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In a healthy person, insulin is produced by the pancreas in a constant proportion to remove excess glucose, or sugar, from the blood, Haoudi explained. When a person consumes more sugar-rich food, the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas (called beta cells) secrete more insulin. When a person eats less sugar, the beta cells produce less insulin. The stem cells engineered by the QBRI team behave in the same way, secreting more or less insulin, depending on glucose levels in the blood, he said.

The studies have been supported by QBRI, a member of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Comnmunity Development, established in 2012 to tackle diseases of major worldwide importance, and particularly prevalent in Qatar and the Middle East, such as diabetes and certain forms of cancer.

QBRI which has a specific focus on developing translational biomedical research and biotechnology, has set up eight research centres: Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Research Centre, Genomic Medicine and Systems Biology Research Centre, Gene-based Therapy Research Centre, Biomedical Engineering Research Centre, Diabetes Research Centre, Cancer Research Centre, Genetic Diseases Research Centre, and the Qatar Biobank.

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Qatar in breakthrough diabetes stem cell therapy