Figure 2.

Concept of regenerative therapy for diabetes using autologous neural stem cells from the olfactory bulb. Adult neural stem cells are extracted form the olfactory bulb surgically using an endoscope. Since neural stem cells in diabetic animals had been found to contain higher IGFBP-4 (the Wnt inhibitor) and lower levels of Wnt3 (activators for insulin production via the NeuroD activation) than wild-type animals, treating the cultured neural stem cells with Wnt3 ligands and anti-IGFBP-4 (neutralizing antibody against the IGFBP-4 protein) rescues insulin expressions during ex vivo culture on the collagen sheets. This step would be improved by the various types of drug screening and/or also for order-made cell screening system for the personalized therapy.