Artificial endocrine organ composed of cultured human skin cells.

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

We proposed to produce artificial endocrine organ composed ofcultured human skin cells into which a human hormone gene was introduced.Human preproinsulin C-DNA driven under the methallothionein, MTT,gene promoter was cloned into a adenovirus vector. After infection of the virus, rAdMTTins, cultured human keratinocytes produced a significant amount of proinsulin in vitro. When the virus infected cells were transplanted into immunodeficient mice, balb/c nu/scid, decreased blood sugar concentration was observed for 3 days. During the same period, plasma proinsulin concentration of the mice was significantly elevated.These results indicate that the virus infected keratinocytes transiently secrete bioactive proinsulin into blood stream of the immunodeficient mice. For stable expression of the introduced gene, we are improving a retrovirus vector for gene transfar into human keratinocytes.