Pancreatic Development as a Basis for the Definition of New Therapies for Diabetes

Understanding pancreas development is important for at least 3 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 pancreas 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 ß-cells develop. In this chapter, I will rapidly summarize what we currently know concerning pancreas development. I will next try to demonstrate that cell replacement therapy for diabetes requires a near-perfect understanding of how ß-cells develop.