Project summary
Insulin-making beta cells in people with type 2 diabetes can stop working properly due to toxic molecules. Dr Catherine Arden wants to explore what causes this by measuring what happens when sugar and fat are added to beta cells. Understanding more about this process will help researchers to develop new treatments that can prevent damage to beta cells. This could slow down the progression of type 2 diabetes and reduce the risk of complications for people living with type 2 diabetes.
Background to research
Beta cells in the pancreas release insulin when they sense rising blood sugar. But for people living with type 2 diabetes, this process doesn’t always work properly and their beta cells can start to die.
In the beta cells of people with type 2 diabetes, there’s a higher amount of toxic molecules called reactive oxygen species, or ROS. Scientists think this might be one of the reasons why their beta cells go wrong, but they don’t fully understand why ROS levels rise.
Proteins are important for lots of processes in the body. Previous research has shown that a set of proteins called NOX proteins might be important for ROS production. Dr Arden wants to find out if NOX proteins are behind high levels of ROS in type 2 beta cells and affect how they work.
Research aims
Dr Arden and her PhD student will mimic type 2 diabetes in their lab by adding sugar and fat to donated beta cells. Then they’ll measure the amount of NOX proteins in the cells, and pinpoint which specific NOX proteins are involved in making ROS. After that they’ll compare the amount of NOX proteins in their type 2 diabetes cells to cells from a donor without diabetes.
Their next step is to find out what happens if they change the levels of NOX proteins in their beta cell samples. They want to see if the cells survive and work properly, and if there are higher levels of ROS.
Potential benefit to people with diabetes
Understanding how NOX proteins affect beta cells could help researchers to develop new treatments to reduce the damage ROS can cause to beta cells and slow down the progression of type 2 diabetes.
As NOX proteins can produce ROS in other types of cells too, these treatments might also help to reduce the risk of serious diabetes complications for people living with type 2 diabetes.
