Resveratrol increases stem cell function in the treatment of damaged pancreas

Abstract

Pancreatic damage results in insufficient insulin secretion, leading to type 1 diabetes. Stem cell‐based therapy has recently shown potential in the treatment of type 1 diabetes. Resveratrol supplementation has demonstrated a beneficial effect in treating diabetes. This study investigates if adipose‐derived stem cells (ADSC), preconditioned with resveratrol, show better effects on experimental diabetic animals. Wistar rats were randomly divided into four groups including sham (normal rats), DM (diabetic rats induced by SZT injection), DM+ADSC (DM rats with receiving autologous ADSC transplantation) and DM+R‐ADSC (DM rats receiving resveratrol preconditioned ADSC). The experimental results show that SZT induced pancreatic damage (DM group), including reduction of islet size, fibrosis pathway activation, survival signaling suppression, and apoptotic pathway expression, lead to serum glucose elevation. Autologous ADSC (DM+ADSC group) transplantation shows improvement in the above observations in DM rats. Furthermore, ADSC precondition with resveratrol (DM+R‐ADSC group) reveals significant improvement in the above pathological observations over both DM and DM+ADSC groups. We found that ADSC precondition with resveratrol increases the survival marker p‐Akt expression, leading to enhanced ADSC viability. This study suggests that ADSC precondition with resveratrol shows potential in the treatment of patients with type 1 DM.