Chinese doctors treated an end-stage type 2 diabetic patient by implanting islet tissue derived in vitro from his own endoderm stem cells. The patient has been insulin-independent for 33 months.

ignirtoq, 16 days ago

I wanted to see exactly where they transplanted the islet cells, because my understanding was that transplanting them to the pancreas was not really viable for a number of reasons:

percutaneous transhepatic portal vein transplantation

Does this mean they implanted them on the surface of the main vein transporting blood out of the liver?

Technus, 16 days ago

Percutaneous means “through the skin”: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percutaneous

In general, percutaneous refers to the access modality of a medical procedure, whereby a medical device is introduced into a patient’s blood vessel via a needle stick.

ignirtoq, 16 days ago

Okay, through the skin, sure, but what about the other 4 words? They go in through the skin into a blood vessel... to where?

rishabh, 15 days ago

Percutaneous: means “through the skin”

Transhepatic: means “across the liver”

Portal vein: a major vein that carries blood from the intestines to the liver

Transplantation: surgical procedure involving the removal of an organ or tissue from one person (donor) and placing it in another person (recipient)

Just use LLM these days!

Deceptichum, 16 days ago

Probably the leg bone, most things connect to it.

jpreston2005, 15 days ago

The allograft they made was from the patients own pluri-potent stem cells, which developed into a piece of tissue comprised of islet beta cells which produce insulin. They took this tissue, cut open this huge vein that goes into the liver, stitched this tissue into the opening, and closed the patient back up.