Promise(s) of mesenchymal stem cells as an in vitro model system to depict pre-diabetic/diabetic milieu in WNIN/GR-Ob mutant rats.

Background: Development of model systems have helped to a large extent, in bridging gap to understand the mechanism(s) of disease including diabetes. Interestingly, WNIN/GR-Ob rats (Mutants), established at National Centre for Laboratory Animals (NCLAS) of National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), form a suitable model system to study obesity with Type 2 diabetes (T2D) demonstrating several secondary complications (cataract, cardiovascular complications, infertility, nephropathy etc). The present study has been carried out to explore the potent application(s) of multipotent stem cells such as bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs), to portray features of pre-diabetic/T2D vis-à-vis featuring obesity, with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), hyperinsulinemia (HI) and insulin resistance (IR) seen with Mutant rats akin to human situation.