Control of pancreatic development by intercellular signals.
Understanding pancreatic development is important for at least three reasons: first, from a cognitive point of view, to understand the development of a complex organ, the pancreas; next, because it is now clear that abnormal pancreatic development can give rise to specific forms of diabetes in humans; and finally, because, if we want to define new treatments for diabetes based on cell therapy or regenerative medicine, we will have to understand in detail how beta-cells develop. In the present paper, we summarize what we currently know concerning pancreatic development and concentrate on some intercellular and environmental signals controlling pancreatic development.
Duvillié
Bertrand
B
Faculty of Medicine, University Paris Descartes, Inserm U845, Necker Hospital, 156 rue de Vaugiraud, 75730 Paris cedex 15, France.
Stetsyuk
Volodymyr
V
Filhoulaud
Gaëlle
G
Guillemain
Ghislaine
G
Scharfmann
Raphaël
R
D000818:Animals; D004777:Environment; D006801:Humans; D010179:Pancreas / Q000196:embryology*; D015398:Signal Transduction; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000378:metabolism
D014157:Transcription Factors