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Adding engineered human blood vessel-forming cells to islet transplants boosted the survival of the insulin-producing cells and reversed diabetes in a preclinical study led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The new approach, which requires further development and testing, could someday enable the much wider use of islet transplants to cure diabetes.

Islets, found in the pancreas, are clusters of insulin-secreting and other cells enmeshed in tiny, specialized blood vessels. The...

Researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine have used a cutting-edge model system to uncover the mechanism by which SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, induces new cases of diabetes, and worsens complications in people who already have it. The team found that viral exposure activates immune cells that in turn destroy beta (β) cells, the pancreatic cells that produce insulin. The study was published Sept. 2...

A new study reported that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, can infect dopamine neurons in the brain and trigger senescence—when a cell loses the ability to grow and divide. The researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons suggest that further research on this finding may shed light on the neurological symptoms associated with long COVID such as brain fog, lethargy and depression....

A drug currently in clinical trials as a cancer therapy can also stimulate pancreatic beta cells to secrete insulin, revealing a previously unknown mechanism for insulin regulation in type 2 diabetes, according to a new study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The preclinical discovery, reported Nov. 9 in Nature Chemical Biology, provides a new chemical tool for probing the biology of diabetes, and...