The present invention provides a cell line which can be substituted for
.beta. cells in human mature pancreatic islets and express insulin in a
glucose-concentration dependent manner, and enables the easy obtainment
of the number of cells which meets the demand. The present invention also
provides a therapeutical cell preparation for treating diabetes. The cell
lines of the present invention can be obtained by integrating both a
nucleotide sequence encoding tamoxifen-induced Cre recombinase and a
nucleotide sequence encoding insulin regulated by glucose-sensitive
promoter into the chromosome in a human immortalized hepatic cell line
FERM BP-7498 containing the TERT gene inserted in between a pair of LoxP
sequences.