Hugo Figueiredo, a Portuguese scientist who has been working in the laboratories of the Institute of biomedical research Augusto Pi-Sunyer, in Barcelona, Spain, for the past seven years, discovered, in an experiment on mice, how to improve the multicellular structures of pancreas transplantation to cure patients with type 1, insulin dependent diabetes. The work, recently published in Science Translational Medicine journal, announced the discovery: that by eliminating a particular protein, the performance of multicellular structures of transplanted pancreas in diabetic rats improved and, as a result, the symptoms of the disease reversed – blood sugar levels went back to normal and the insulin levels were high. For the expert, the results are promising, once the transplant of pancreatic islets, as these structures are called, has been touted «as a potential therapy, for its healing capacity» and for being «a much less invasive procedure» than a pancreas transplantation.
