A cure for diabetes could be a step closer after scientists found cells from the spleen can transform into insulin-producing cells.

US researchers were able to halt, and even reverse, the disease in mice.

The research offers hope to people with Type 1 diabetes who need insulin injections to survive.

The team from Massachusetts General Hospital, whose announcement coincided with World Diabetes Day on Friday, hope to begin human trials soon.

Diabetes affects around 350,000 people in the UK, and 194 million around the world.

Type 1 diabetics do not produce insulin, needed to convert sugar into fuel and normally produced in the pancreas in cells called islet cells.

Their islet cells are destroyed by the body's own immune system, leading to sugar building up dangerously in the blood.

'Re-educating the immune system'

The US researchers had already shown that injecting diabetic mice with spleen cells from healthy mice re-educated their immune systems so that they could accept an islet cell transplant.

But the mice unexpectedly began producing islet cells that could secrete insulin themselves.

This latest research found this only happened if the mice had been given a specific type of spleen cell.

They can be distinguished from other spleen cells because they lack a particular molecule called CD45.

Scientists had believed it was impossible to regenerate insulin-secreting islet cells.

To double-check their findings, researchers carried out the same treatment, giving female diabetic mice spleen cells from healthy male cells.

They found that in diabetic mice that achieved long-term normal glucose metabolism, all of the new functioning islets had significant numbers of cells with Y chromosomes, showing they had come from the male donors.

In a further experiment, donor spleen cells were marked with a fluorescent green protein, and again these cells were found throughout the newly developed islets.

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