Pancreas engineering

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus is one of the most diffuse and destructive diseases. It affects more than 190 million individuals in the world and is the fifth leading killer of Americans, with 73,000 deaths every year. Diabetes is a disease in which the body's failure to regulate glucose can lead to serious and even fatal complications. The incidence of diabetes has increased by 61% since 1991. The increasing prevalence and huge cost, exceeding 100 billion dollars annually in the United States, create the need for innovative research in this field [1]. There are two forms of diabetes, type I and type II, which differ in their pathogenesis. Type I is an autoimmune disease, presenting primarily during the first two decades of life and resulting from the destruction of insulin-producing ß cells in the pancreatic islets of Langerhans. Type II generally presents in adults, is characterized by insulin resistance in the tissues and eventually ß-cell failure in about 50% of the cases. In both types of diabetes the islets of Langerhans are the targets of destruction [2, 3]. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.