Weighing up β-cell mass in mice and humans: Self-renewal, progenitors or stem cells?

Understanding how β-cells maintain themselves in the adult pancreas is important for prioritizing strategies aimed at ameliorating or ideally curing different forms of diabetes. There has been much debate over whether β-cell proliferation, as a means of self-renewal, predominates over the existence and differentiation of a pancreatic stem cell or progenitor cell population. This article describes the two opposing positions based largely on research in laboratory rodents and its extrapolation to humans. © 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.