Method for in vitro formation of vertebrate pancreas

摘要

According to the present invention, a method wherein a pancreas induced in vitro which enables to obtain knowledge regarding the mechanisms of differentiation and formation of pancreas that is useful for developmental engineering and organ engineering, a pancreas for transplantation by which it can be evaluated whether or not a pancreas induced in vitro can function in practice in vivo,and a pancreas induced in vitro which contributes to the development of diagnosis and treatment of pancreas disorder for higher animals, can artificially and efficiently be induced from a gastrula apart from the presumptive region of pancreas is provided. Presumptive ectoderm region of undifferentiated cells of late blastula that forms atypical epithelium but not pancreas when cultured in vitro, was cut out from a late blastula of a Xenopus, treated with acitivin, followed by treatment with retinoic acid after three to five hours. These explants were subjected to stationary culture in Steinberg's solution containing BSA, and its developmental fate was changed to pancreas, forming a morphologic as well as functional pancreas in vitro with high efficiency.