If the function of the adrenal gland is disturbed, it does not produce enough stress-adjusting messengers. The results are heavy and often life-menacing illnesses. Because the medicine provides assistance up to now only limited, researchers developed an artificial adrenal system under the direction of Prof. Dr. Stefan R. Bornstein of the university hospital Carl Gustav Carus together with the medicine Nobel Prize Laureate Prof. Dr. Andrew Schally in an animal model. This will make future human transplantation of adrenal cells possible. Patients with adrenal failure, but also innate adrenal illnesses like the congenital adrenal syndrome should profit from it.

If a person stands under stress, his body tips out stress regulators. This are Cortisol, Adrenalin and Noradrenalin - hormones and messenger substances - which intervene adjusting in the metabolism and help thus the organism to master the unusual load. Cortisol has here an essential meaning for the coal hydrate household, the fat metabolism as well as the protein turnover. These hormone and messenger materials are produced in the adrenal glands which are valid therefore as central stress organs. By a sub-function of the adrenal gland, the so-called adrenal insufficiency, the production of the stress regulator decreases and the normal balance in the metabolism is disturbed. A state which has serious results for the health and can be even life-menacing. Just innate disturbances with the hormone education make worse the quality of life of the affected persons clearly. An example is the lack of 21-Hydroxylase, the most frequent form of the congenital syndrome with which the affected persons show a strong masculinization.

And also the determining next step succeeded: The researchers gave the cells before the transplant in a small capsule, an artificial adrenal system which they implanted, finally, to the receiver. The advantage: The artificial system ― developed by an Israeli enterprise ― makes an immunosuppression in recipients superfluous. The capsule protects the donator's cells against the attacks of the immune system, however, lets pass the hormones by the half-permeable walls into the body of the receiver.
For Professor Bornstein an important step on the way has succeeded with it to the artificial adrenal system of the person: „Our vision is that people get in future even adrenal cells of another kind transplanted, as for example from the pig. The capsule creates the biotechnical condition for it, because it separates the donator's cells from the body of the receiver and transfers exclusively the hormones which are important for the metabolism. “Suitable for a future transplantation in the eyes of the Dresden scientists are patients with adrenal insufficiency, but also with congenital diseases such as the lack of 21-hydroxylase.

The research findings from Dresden were now under the title "Transplantation of bovine adrenocortical cells encapsulated in alginate" in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS, published (doi:10.1073 / pnas.1500242112).

Information for journalists:
Universitätsklinikum Carl Gustav Carus Dresden
Technische Universität Dresden
Medizinische Klinik und Poliklinik III
Prof. Dr. med. Stefan R. Bornstein
Phone: +49 0351 458-5955, Fax: -6398

http://www.uniklinikum-dresden.de/mk3