Endocrine Abstracts

Human pluripotent stem cells can be generated from embryos at the blastocyst stage (human embryonic stem cells or hESCs) or from reprogrammed somatic cells (human induced pluripotent stem cells or hIPSCs). These cells combine the property to grow indefinitely in vitro and the capacity to differentiate into a broad number of cell types. Thus, human pluripotent cells represent a unique opportunity for regenerative medicine since they could enable to production of infinite...

Heterozygous mutations in the transcription factor, hepatocyte nuclear factor 1b (HNF1B), result in multisystem disease including diabetes due to beta-cell dysfunction and pancreatic hypoplasia. However, the mechanisms that underlie development of diabetes in HNF1B mutation carriers are still not fully understood due to lack of an appropriate animal model system. Human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), which are capable of self-renewal and can differentiate into any cell type, ar...