In a previous answer, you told a patient, ” your pancreas is unlikely to come back if it is completely removed, but almost complete regeneration, within a year, has been reported after partial resection for a benign tumor.” If the pancreas is able to regenerate itself, why can’t it resume production of insulin or be stimulated to produce insulin in type 1 diabetes?

The reason that insulin producing cells in the pancreas cannot regenerate is because the basic autoimmune disorder (which is not present after surgically induced diabetes) in type�1A (autoimmune) diabetes still persists. At the present moment the best prospect seems to be to replace islet cells surgically under the cover of some of the new immunosuppressive agents like tacrolimus and serolimus. Other groups are trying to do this with porcine islets that are specially encapsulated to resist immune destruction and, one day, perhaps it will be possible to induce new islet tissue using stem cells, but continued immunosuppression, of some sort, including chimera induction will still be needed.

DOB