Aggregation of Engineered Human β-Cells Into Pseudoislets: Insulin Secretion and Gene Expression Profile in Normoxic and Hypoxic Milieu.

Innovative treatments to cure type 1 diabetes are being actively researched. Among the different strategies, the replacement of β-cells has given promising results. Classically, islets from cadaveric donors are transplanted into diabetic patients, but recently phase I clinical trials that use stem cell-derived β-cells have been started.

A human beta cell line with drug inducible excision of immortalizing transgenes.

Objectives: Access to immortalized human pancreatic beta cell lines that are phenotypically close to genuine adult beta cells, represent a major tool to better understand human beta cell physiology and develop new therapeutics for Diabetes. Here we derived a new conditionally immortalized human beta cell line, EndoC-βH3 in which immortalizing transgene can be efficiently removed by simple addition of tamoxifen.

Methods: We used lentiviral mediated gene transfer to stably integrate a tamoxifen inducible form of CRE (CRE-ERT2) into the recently developed conditionally immortalized EndoC βH2 line.