Taken altogether, these in vitro and in vivo experiments demonstrate that the beneficial effects of MSCs in T1DM may be
related to both their immunosuppressant activity and subsequent protective effects on damaged tissue, and their capacity
to transdifferentiate into IPCs [Figure 2].
MSC transdifferentiation into IPC and its use in clinic learning
points
Click here to view
With sporadic reports of use of MSCsderived IPCs and their further use in clinical trials to treat T1DM, it can be
concluded that (i) this study is only a first step toward using MSCsderived IPCs as a cellbased treatment, which appears
to be suitable for treatment of for T1DM, (ii) MSCsderived IPCs are an ideal population of personal stem cells for cell
replacement therapy and also MSCs could be induced to differentiate into physiologically competent functional isletlike
cell aggregates, which may provide as a source of alternative islets for cell replacement therapy in T1DM. Generation of
MSCs into IPCs is feasible and promising making the transplantation of IPC a promising approach for the treatment of
T1DM. However, there is no standard method for IPC generation and the wide variations in induction techniques used
may be a challenge to researchers. As most of these stem cells are being tested in preclinical T1DM with rare clinical use
in humans, further exploration is necessary for the in vitro generation of sufficient IPCs that can produce sufficient
insulin for wide clinical use. The biggest challenge for the future trials using this approach is to prevent or treat relapses
and maintain complete or very good partial responses for very long time.