After screening hundreds of compounds for their effects on fat development, researchers have discovered that an ingredient found in some plants fights diabetes in mice without some of side effects attributed to other antidiabetes drugs. The chemical they pinpointed, known as harmine, was first isolated more than 150 years ago from plants traditionally included in ritual and medicinal preparations around the world, team reports in May issue of the journal Cell Metabolism.

Johns Hopkins undergraduates have invented a device to improve cell therapy for diabetes patients by anchoring transplanted insulin-producing cells inside a major blood vessel.

New studies in the laboratory of Dr. Darwin J. Prockop, Director of Tulane University's Center for Gene Therapy, are shedding light on the previously mysterious mechanism through which even relatively small amounts of stem/progenitor cells taken from a patient's own bone marrow enhance repair of damaged tissues.

Ten genetic variants associated with type 2 diabetes, a disease which impacts more than 170 million people worldwide, have been identified or confirmed by a U.S.-Finnish team led by scientists at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Scientists from the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Lund University and Novartis today announced the discovery of three unsuspected regions of human DNA that contain clear genetic risk factors for type 2 diabetes, and another that is associated with elevated blood triglycerides.

Research increasingly shows promise to both slow and relieve the effects diabetic retinopathy, the most common complication of diabetes.

Researchers from the University of Washington, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, Merck Laboratories, and Mount Sinai School of Medicine have released a study suggesting that specific laboratory and clinical tests can predict outcome of antibiotic therapy for infections in persons with diabetes.

A study by U.S. and Australian researchers is helping dispel the 40-year-old "thrifty genotype theory," which purports that certain minority groups are genetically prone to diabetes.

The high rate of diabetes among indigenous people is not due to their genetic heritage, according to a recently published study.

Replacing faulty or missing cells with new insulin-making cells has been the object of diabetes research for the last decade. Past studies in tissue culture have suggested that one type of pancreas cell could be coaxed to transform into insulin-producing islet cells.

University of Rochester researchers announce in the current issue of Applied Optics a technique that in 60 seconds or less measures multiple chemicals in body fluids, using a laser, white light, and a reflective tube.

Living Cell Technologies Limited (ASX: LCT) today announced it has published evidence outlining the survival and identification of live porcine islet cells and insulin production in a human patient 10 years after receiving a pig islet cell transplant.