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World J Transl Med. Jun 26, 2022; 10(1): 1-13
Published online Jun 26, 2022. doi: 10.5528/wjtm.v10.i1.1
Current progress and emerging technologies for generating extrapancreatic functional insulin-producing cells
Md Aejaz Habeeb, Sandeep Kumar Vishwakarma, Safwaan Habeeb, Aleem Ahmed Khan
Md Aejaz Habeeb, Sandeep Kumar Vishwakarma, Safwaan Habeeb, Aleem Ahmed Khan, Centre for Liver Research and Diagnostics, Deccan College of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad 500058, Telangana, India
Author contributions: All the authors participated in literature search, manuscript writing and revision; Vishwakarma SK formatted the manuscript and designed figures; Habeeb MA provided clinical inputs; Khan AA supervised overall study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Md Aejaz Habeeb, MBBS, MD, DM, PhD, Centre for Liver Research and Diagnostics, Deccan College of Medical Sciences, Kanchanbagh, DMRL X Road, Hyderabad 500058, Telangana, India. aejazhabeeb@hotmail.com
Received: January 12, 2022
Peer-review started: January 12, 2022
First decision: February 8, 2022
Revised: March 5, 2022
Accepted: June 4, 2022
Article in press: June 4, 2022
Published online: June 26, 2022
Processing time: 163 Days and 0.9 Hours
Abstract

Diabetes has been one of the major concerns in recent years, due to the increasing rate of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The available treatment strategies for uncontrolled diabetes mellitus (DM) are pancreas or islet transplantation. However, these strategies are limited due to unavailability of quality pancreas/ islet donors, life-long need of immunosuppression, and associated complications. Cell therapy has emerged as a promising alternative options to achieve the clinical benefits in the management of uncontrolled DM. Since the last few years, various sources of cells have been used to convert into insulin-producing β-like cells. These extrapancreatic sources of cells may play a significant role in β-cell turnover and insulin secretion in response to environmental stimuli. Stem/progenitor cells from liver have been proposed as an alternative choice that respond well to glucose stimuli under strong transcriptional control. The liver is one of the largest organs in the human body and has a common endodermal origin with pancreatic lineages. Hence, liver has been proposed as a source of a large number of insulin-producing cells. The merging of nanotechnology and 3D tissue bioengineering has opened a new direction for producing islet-like cells suitable for in vivo transplantation in a cordial microenvironment. This review summarizes extrapancreatic sources for insulin-secreting cells with reference to emerging technologies to fulfill the future clinical need.

Keywords: Diabetes mellitus; Cell-based therapy; Insulin producing cells; Extra-pancreatic sources; Biomaterials; Tissue engineering

Core tip: The currently accepted available treatment strategies for uncontrolled diabetes mellitus (DM) are pancreas and islet transplantation. However, these strategies are limited due to unavailability of quality pancreas/islet donors, life-long need of immunosuppression, and associated complications. Exogenous insulin administration is one of the clinically established options for patients with type 1 DM. Liver could be an appropriate extrapancreatic source to isolate insulin-producing cells due to their similar embryonic developmental origin. The need to develop more effective diabetes cell-based therapies lies in the advancements of robust sensitive micro- and nanodevices for exogenous insulin delivery.