Wendy Macfarlane of Britain's Brighton University told an international diabetes conference in South Africa that new work in the field indicates that efforts to make both embryonic and adult stem cells produce insulin can lead to animal studies of a replacement beta cell by the turn of the decade. The goal is to develop an insulin producing cell that can respond to the fluctuation of glucose levels in the body. Diabetes kills 3.8 million people every year and has been growing at epidemic rates. In another 20 years diabetes could afflict 380 million people if no cure is found.
- read the AFP report on diabetes research