News Releases & Research Results Elucidation of the proliferation mechanism of human pancreatic cells - Progress in cell therapies for diabetes -

The results of research and development conducted by Researcher Azuma Kimura and Professor Kenji Osafune of the Department of Cell Growth and Differentiation, Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), Kyoto University.

• The “WNT7B” protein was identified as a downstream growth factor of “ATT7867,” a compound known to promote the proliferation of pancreatic progenitor cells. A method for proliferating and culturing human iPS cell-derived pancreatic progenitor cells was successfully developed with the WNT7B protein.
• The results of this R&D should enable a stable supply of cells essential for cell therapies for diabetes.

This project was conducted with the support of the Research Center Network for Realization of Regenerative Medicine by AMED.

The results were published online in the American scientific journal Cell Chemical Biology on October 30.

Kimura A, et al. Combined Omics Approaches Reveal the Roles of Non-canonical WNT7B Signaling and YY1 in the Proliferation of Human Pancreatic Progenitor Cell Cell Chemical Biology
DOI: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2020.08.018