High efficiency differentiation of functional islets from human iPS cells and hiPS-endocrine progenitor cells in vitro.

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26870158
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Digestive surgery; General surgery
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Watanabe Ami 東京大学, 分子細胞生物学研究所, 特任研究員 (40611421)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 膵臓 / iPS細胞

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We previously showed that functional islets with a 3-dimensional structure consisting of multiple endocrine cells were formed in vitro from mouse fetal pancreatic bud cells. Based on this finding, we have developed a culture system to generate functional islet from human iPS cells. In this study, we isolate highly enriched population of pancreatic endocrine progenitor cells from endocrine progenitor cell culture stage cells by cell sorting. These cells can differentiate into the functional islet-like cell cluster. This result indicate that the iPS-islets can be generated from endocrine cells efficiently. Furthermore, we found that Ngn3 positive cells formed islet-like cell aggregate autonomously in this differentiation system. We are currently trying to scale up the culture system for production of a large quantity of islets.

Free Research Field

再生医療