Most patients with type 1 diabetes rely on multiple daily insulin injections to maintain blood glucose control. However, insulin
injections carry the risk of inducing hypoglycemia and do not eliminate diabetic complications. We sought to develop and evaluate
a regulatable cell-based system for delivery of insulin to treat diabetes. We generated two intestinal cell lines in which
human insulin expression is controlled by mifepristone. Insulin mRNA expression was dependent on the mifepristone dose and
incubation time and cells displayed insulin and C-peptide immunoreactivity and glucose-induced insulin release following mifepristone
treatment. Cell transplantation followed by mifepristone administration reversed streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetes in
mice, and this effect was dependent on the mifepristone dose delivered. These data support the notion that engineering regulatable
insulin expression within a cell already equipped for regulated secretion may be efficacious for the treatment of insulin-dependent
diabetes.
Keywords Diabetes - Transplantation - Insulin - Cell therapy - Inducible - K-cell