Figures & data
Figure 1 Potential pathways of beta‐cell expansion. Direct proliferation is relatively active in many rodents, but human beta cells have an extremely low capacity to replicate. Instead, it appears that human beta cells can expand through a phase of transient dedifferentiation into a more primitive duct‐like epithelial cell, or even through epithelial‐mesenchymal transition (EMT) into a mesenchyme‐like islet precursor.
Figure 2 The challenge of generating physiologically functioning insulin‐producing cells from embryonic stem (ES) cells requires that the differentiating cell follows a pathway resembling that occurring in the developing embryo.
