RESUMO
Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic diseases, mainly including type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Treatment for type 1 and part of type 2 often involves regular insulin injection. However, this treatment neither precisely controls the blood sugar levels, nor prevents the diabetes complications. Transplantation of islets of Langerhans offers an attractive strategy for diabetes therapies, but its wide application has been limited by donor shortage and immunological rejection after transplantation. Stem cells with strong proliferation capacity and multipotential may be potential cell sources in diabetes therapies. For this, adult stem cells are interesting because of absence of teratoma formation and ethnical problems. Adult pancreatic stem cells (PSCs) really exist and could produce insulin-secreting cells both under the condition of pancreatic injury and in vitro culture, but lack of effective markers to enrich PSCs hampers the studies of exploring the expanding and differentiating conditions in vitro. Some other adult stem cells, such as hepatic stem cells, marrow stem cells or intestine stem cells, were also suggested to transdifferentiate into insulin-producing cells under special culture conditions in vitro or by genetic modifications. Moreover, transplanting these adult stem cells-derived insulin-secreting cells into the diabetic mouse could cure diabetes. Thus, adult stem cells would supply the abundant beta-cell sources for cell replacement therapy of diabetes.