A DUBLIN-BASED research group has made a discovery that can be used to develop new treatments against diabetes.
The team from the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland and the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital have identified an insulin-producing cell which, when it dies, releases a regenerative boost to its neighbours, encouraging them to grow.
The discovery opens up new opportunities to develop drug therapies that could help the estimated 141,000 people in the State who have either type one or type two diabetes, said the Diabetes Federation of Ireland.
Details of the findings are published in the November issue of the journal Diabetes. The work involved Prof Jochen Prehn, professor of physiology, and Dr Caroline Bonner of the department of physiology and medical physics, both of the Royal College of Surgeons, and consultant endocrinologist Dr Maria Byrne and Dr Siobhán Bacon, registrar in endocrinology at the Mater hospital.
The researchers looked at beta cells, the pancreatic tissues that produce insulin. Insulin is an essential hormone that controls how the body uses blood sugars to produce energy. Without insulin the level of blood sugars can rise dangerously, causing shock and even death.
Type one diabetes occurs when the body’s own immune system attacks and destroys the beta cells during early childhood.
In type two, age and lifestyle factors combine to disturb insulin production.
“Our study shows that when [beta] cells die off they actually stimulate the local environment to produce new cells,” Prof Prehn said.
The work, funded by the Health Research Board and the Mater Foundation, also showed that even in type one diabetics, the body continues to try and produce beta cells. The Mater hospital collaborators were able to measure the beta cell regenerative substance in blood samples, which showed that beta cells were trying to form, Prof Prehn said.
“There is a tremendous hope that there is that capacity to regenerate beta cells or protect them against immune cell attack.” The discovery could also help show whether drugs or other treatments were working in the body, he added.
“Any better understanding of how insulin is produced in the body is important to us,” stated Dr Anna Clarke, health promotion officer of the Diabetes Federation of Ireland.
“It is significant because all new discoveries offer a way to respond with a pharmaceutical preparation,” she added.
