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The artificial pancreas is a technology in development to help people with diabetes automatically control their blood glucose level by providing the substitute endocrine functionality of a healthy pancreas. There are several important exocrine (digestive) and endocrine (hormonal) functions of the pancreas, but it is the lack of insulin production which is the motivation to develop a substitute. While the current state of insulin replacement therapy is appreciated for its life-saving capability, the task of manually managing the blood sugar level with insulin alone is arduous and inadequate. The goal of the artificial pancreas is two-fold: #to improve insulin replacement therapy until glycemic control is practically normal as evident by the avoidance of the complications of hyperglycemia, and # to ease the burden of therapy for the insulin-dependent. Different approaches under consideration include: * the medical equipment approach—using an insulin pump under closed loop control using real-time data from a continuous blood glucose sensor. * the bioengineering approach—the development of a bio-artificial pancreas consisting of a biocompatible sheet of encapsulated beta cells. When surgically implanted, the islet sheet will behave as the endocrine pancreas and will be viable for years. * the gene therapy approach—the therapeutic infection of a diabetic person by a genetically engineered virus which causes a DNA change of intestinal cells to become insulin-producing cells. ==Approaches== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「artificial pancreas」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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