A hundred years ago, scientist Frederick Banting made the discovery of the life-saving insulin drug, and won a Nobel Prize for his achievement in 1923. Since then, insulin has become the only treatment for diabetes symptoms, but not diabetes itself.
Now, a research team from the Technical University of Munich and the German Center for Diabetes Research claims it has identified a drug target that can block the function of an inceptor, and lead to an increased sensitization of the insulin signaling pathway in pancreatic beta cells. This drug could help treat diabetes. The study was published in the journal Nature on January 27.
Diabetes mellitus is a complex disease characterized by the loss or dysfunction of insulin-producing beta cells in the islets of Langerhans, a specialist "micro-organ" in the pancreas that controls systemic blood sugar levels. Intensive insulin therapy has the potential for improved blood sugar control and diabetes remission but also leads to unintended weight gain and even more severe side effects, such as an increased risk of deep drop in blood sugar causing unawareness.
During the study, the researchers said they managed to determine a new inceptor (encoded by the gene Iir) that could be targeted to treat this disease. In experiments on mice, they found that knocking out inceptor in beta cells and blocking its function using monoclonal antibodies helped increase insulin signaling and the functional beta cell mass. This makes inceptor a very promising target to treat the root cause of diabetes, the loss and dysfunction of beta cells.
"Our discovery of the insulin inhibitory receptor now is another important step to finally get rid of the disease," says Matthias Tschöp, CEO at Helmholtz Zentrum München Company whose researchers participated in the study.
"While the COVID-19 pandemic represents an immediate threat we will overcome, we must not forget that diabetes remains one of the biggest and fastest growing killers on our planet," he added.
