Project summary
Gestational diabetes is a type of diabetes that can develop during pregnancy. It can increase the risk of both mum and baby developing type 2 diabetes in the future. Dr Sarah Chapple wants to know if a chemical found in broccoli, called sulforaphane, could help the pancreas to work better during pregnancy. This will help us understand if sulforaphane holds promise to treat people with or at risk of gestational diabetes, and to lower the risk of type 2 diabetes for mums and their children.
Background to research
Gestational diabetes is a type of diabetes that can develop during pregnancy. It happens when the mother’s pancreas doesn’t adapt to changes that happen in the body during pregnancy and can’t release insulin properly.
Women who’ve had gestational diabetes, and their children, have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes in later life.
Dr Sarah Chapple has discovered that a chemical found in broccoli, called sulforaphane, can help the pancreas work better in mice with gestational diabetes. Sulforaphane works in our body by tuning up a molecule called Nrf2, which plays a role in helping the pancreas adapt to pregnancy.
Now, Dr Chapple and her team hope to pinpoint the exact role of Nrf2 in gestational diabetes and explore its potential as a new treatment.
Research aims
Dr Chapple aims to understand how Nrf2 becomes activated in pregnancy, and how problems with Nrf2 activity may contribute to the development of gestational diabetes and risk of type 2 diabetes. To do this, the team will look at how Nrf2 makes sure that beta cells release enough insulin to meet the needs of pregnant mice without diabetes.
They’ll then study another group of mice without Nrf2 in their beta cells. This will allow them to check if and how a lack of Nrf2 affects the function of beta cells in pregnancy.
Finally, they’ll test whether sulforaphane can reactivate Nrf2 and help beta cells adapt to pregnancy in mice with gestational diabetes. They’ll also investigate if sulforaphane can prevent the development of type 2 diabetes in the children of these mice, and study how it alters the development of their beta cells.
Potential benefit to people with diabetes
At the moment, treatments for gestational diabetes focus on managing blood sugar levels and there is no effective intervention that can stop gestational diabetes. This study hopes to help change that by understanding the potential of Nrf2 to treat a root cause of gestational diabetes, and prevent mothers and their children from developing type 2 diabetes. New treatments would be life-changing for families affected by gestational diabetes, breaking the generational link between gestational and type 2 diabetes.
