Protecting beta cells against stress may guard against type 1 diabetes was discussing on the Joslin Diabetes Center newsletter, 27 July 2020. 

Joslin Diabetes Center researchers, working with mouse models and in human cells, has shown that targeting a protein called renalase may protect beta cells against autoimmune attack by strengthening them against stress, says Stephan Kissler, an investigator in Joslin’s Section on Immunobiology, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and co-senior author on a paper describing the work in Nature Metabolism. Kissler, co-senior author Peng Yi, PhD, and their colleagues also demonstrated that an existing FDA-approved drug inhibits renalase and increases the survival of beta cells in those lab models.

The Joslin study joins a growing set of evidence suggesting that functional problems with beta cells themselves may help to trigger the autoimmune attack in type 1 diabetes, say Kissler and Yi, who is an assistant investigator in the Islet Cell and Regenerative Biology Section. “You might have genes that make the beta cell a little bit dysfunctional and more prone to becoming a target of the immune system,” Kissler explains.

Read more:  Protecting beta cells against stress may guard against type 1 diabetes

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