The adult mammalian pancreas contains separate precursors of pancreatic and neural crest developmental origins.

The developmental origin of a pancreatic precursor cell could provide clues to properties that may be crucial to its molecular regulation and therapeutic potential. Previously, lineage tracing experiments showed that multipotent precursors in mouse islets had a pancreatic and not a neural crest developmental origin. However, a different Cre reporter system reveals that there is, in fact, a rare population of proliferative cells in the pancreas that is descended from the Wnt1 neural crest lineage, in addition to the majority population descended from the Pdx1 pancreatic lineage. These two proliferative cell populations are distinct in their gene expression and differentiation potential. This evidence suggests that there are at least two distinct types of precursors present in adult pancreatic islets, one of pancreatic origin and one of neural crest origin.