The Effects of Cell Clustering on Cell Differentiation in Human Pancreatic Ductal Epithelial Cancer Cells
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Date
2011-12
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
For diabetes mellitus type I, regular insulin therapy is not enough to completely control the disease. Ineffective control of blood glucose levels can lead to complications in other parts of the body, including kidney failure, neuropathy, cardiovascular disease, blindness, and acute hypoglycemic attacks. Although pancreatic transplants are one possible solution to reduce the effects of diabetes, it is not the best option. The proposed work of this research project is new and innovative with respect to hypothesis and methodology. It follows the goal to identify the role of cell clustering for differentiation of β cells so that the option of pancreatic islet transplantation can be substituted completely. Work by Boretti and Gooch in their paper “Induced Cell Clustering Enhances Islet β Cell Formation from Human Cultures Enriched for Pancreatic Ductal Epithelial Cells” was relevant to this project as it established the importance of clustering for differentiation of precursors cells into β cells. I used this work as a motivation to further research the amount of clustering required for the expression of insulin. My project speculates that the number of cells per cluster is essential for differentiated β cells to form. Further, there also must be a certain number of cells per cluster in order for proper insulin expression to take place.
Upon experimentation, the results showed that cluster sizes of at least 4 cells per cluster were successful in expressing insulin as differentiated β cells. Whereas, small cluster sizes with only 1-2 cells per cluster were not able to express insulin. Further an area-to-perimeter analysis showed that ratios greater than 4.5 were common among insulin-expressing large cluster sizes. Although the results are quite preliminary, the investigation of the role that cluster size has on differentiation of β cells has a lot of potential for further research.
Description
The thesis was funded by the College of Engineering by the Undergraduate Research Scholarship, when the project proposal was approved in April 2011.
Keywords
effects, cell clustering, pancreatic ductal, differentiation, cells