Biologists have confirmed in new research that a hormone in the liver can stimulate the growth of insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas. They hope this research discovery will prompt the development of new therapies for diabetes.
Douglas Melton, co-director from the Stem Cell Institute at Harvard University, led the research team to identify this hormone called betatrophin by using a peptide that binds to the insulin receptor to induce insulin resistance in mice. It was confirmed that it can cause pancreatic β-cell proliferation of animal insulin secretion. The researchers then searched for genes that showed increased activity, narrowing the scope to a gene they could associate with betatrophin production.
Further experiments showed that when betatrophin was injected into 8-week-old mice, their insulin-secreting pancreatic β-cell proliferation increased by an average of 17 times. The research team said that Betatrophin was also found in the liver, and they published these findings in the April 25 issue of Cell.
Melton said: "It's hard to find a new hormone. What's interesting is that it's so specific. It only works on beta cells and has a very powerful effect."
In mouse and human embryonic and neonatal pancreatic beta cells can rapidly proliferate, but their growth drops sharply into adulthood. In later years, β-cell dysfunction is the main cause of type 2 diabetes. This metabolic disease has affected more than 300 million people worldwide. In the United States alone, two forms of diabetes—type 1 and type 2 diabetes—cause $ 176 billion in direct medical costs each year.
Treatment hope
Melton believes that injecting betatrophin once a month or even once a year may induce sufficient insulin beta cell activity to provide blood glucose regulation comparable to daily insulin injections in type 2 diabetes patients. More importantly, because the body will produce insulin itself, this method causes fewer complications. He also hopes that betatrophin will help patients with type 1 diabetes.
Matthias Hebrok, director of the Diabetes Center at the University of California, San Francisco, said: "This work is a remarkable advance. These studies have found very interesting. But I hope to repeat these experiments in older mice. Those are on the way to diabetes. Can elderly mice on the road really improve the proliferative capacity of insulin beta cells through betatrophin treatment? "
Henrik Semb, executive director of the Danish Stem Cell Center, said: "Identifying a factor betatrophin, which can stimulate mouse β-cell proliferation with amazing efficiency, is a very important research finding, because it is to carry out further research to clarify β- The underlying mechanism of cell proliferation provides a starting point. "
Controlling β-cell proliferation in the human body has proven to be very difficult.
According to Melton, it takes approximately 2 years to generate sufficient betatrophin for human clinical trial testing. Now Melton is also working to determine the receptor for this hormone and its mechanism of action.
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