What took so long? that's what millions of diabetics are asking after scientists stumbled on a hormone that could help people with Type 2 diabetes make the insulin they lack--without drugs and without needles.
The hormone, called betatrophin, was discovered when Douglas Melton, a co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and his postdoctoral fellow Peng Yi were searching for ways to mimic the disease in animals. In humans with Type 2 diabetes, insulin-making cells in the pancreas gradually lose their ability to sense and respond to glucose levels in the blood. But when Yi gave mice a compound that shut...
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