Issue 35 September 2011
7.Diabetes Medicine Updates

Diabetes: New drug target that stimulates beta cell growth identified
      Main impetus on diabetes research is to discover molecules that stimulate beta cell growth and to find drugs that target these molecules. Now, JDRF-funded researchers in collaboration with the pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche, have done both, discovering not only a protein that regulates beta cell growth, but also a chemical compound that stimulates it.

      The work builds on a discovery made five years ago, when Dr. Stoffel and his team first showed that a once obscure protein, called Tmem 27, is localized on the surface membrane of beta cells. At the time, they found that increased levels of Tmem27 on beta cells were associated with increased islet mass in mice. They also found that if Tmem27 is cleaved, it left the protein completely inactivated .

      "We hypothesized that if we could prevent Tmem27 from being cleaved and increase the levels of this protein, we could get more beta cell growth," says Dr. Stoffel, who is also a 2010 recipient of JDRF's Gerold & Kayla Grodsky Basic Research Scientist Award. "This observation gave us the rationale to look for what was inactivating Tmem27."

Sweat meter warns patients of dangerously low blood sugar

     Some diabetic patients receive no warning before they pass out from low blood sugar. A modern sweat meter could alert patients in time. Biathletes and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) patients might also benefit from the sweat meter.

     A sweat meter developed at the University of Oslo and the National Hospital can send a discreet alert - via a mobile phone - before a patient suffers an attack due to low blood sugar.

     "The advantage of the sweat meter is that the patient doesn't have to prick themselves. All you need to do is paste an electrode on your skin," says Professor Orjan G. Martinsen, Department of Physics at the University of Oslo.

     "We envisage that the device will be able to measure sweat activity continuously, providing an indication of whether the patient is about to experience low blood sugar. It can communicate directly or via a smartphone. The warning system will then not be very bothersome for the patient," says Christian Tronstad, a medical technology researcher at Oslo University Hospital, the National Hospital.

 
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