Posts tagged ‘Diabetes’
Canadian Scientist appointed to the Order of Canada
De. Bernie Zinman
“It’s a humbling experience to receive this kind of recognition and it makes me realize how fortunate I have been to have had the opportunity to work with many talented colleagues and have the outstanding support of the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute and the Department of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, University of Toronto,” said Dr. Zinman.
One step closer to cloning humans
Researchers said Wednesday they used a cloning technique to create human embryos that were close genetic copies of the people from which they were derived—a potentially significant breakthrough in the quest to develop patient-specific stem cells to treat serious diseases.
Scientists involved in the experiment, which was published in the journal Nature, created 13 early-stage human embryos that were partial genetic clones of diabetic patients. The copies were not identical, as each embryo carried three sets of chromosomes—an extra set. That means they were abnormal and wouldn’t have been viable if implanted in a womb and carried to term.
Click to read more from the Wall Street Journal.
Treating obesity in the gut-brain axis
Suraj Unniappan, associate professor in York’s Department of Biology, Faculty of Science & Engineering, is delving into the metabolic effects of a protein called nesfatin-1, abundantly present in the brain. His studies found that rats administered with nesfatin-1 ate less, used more stored fat and became more active. In addition, the protein stimulated insulin secretion from the pancreatic beta cells of both rats and mice.
“[The rats] actually ate more frequently but in lesser amounts,” says Unniappan, a member of York’s neuroscience graduate diploma program, and a recipient of a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) New Investigator Award. “In addition, they were more active and we found that their fatty acid oxidization was increased. In other words, the energy reserve being preferably used during nesfatin-1 treatment was fat. This suggests more fat loss, which could eventually result in body weight loss,” he says.
The findings were reported in two recent research articles from Unniappan’s laboratory: one published today in Endocrinology and another in March 2011 in Journal of Endocrinology.
To read more click here.
Multiplex Assays for Human Diabetes Biomakers
Profiling of multiple diabetes and metabolic biomarkers allows researchers to better understand the complex interactions among adipokines, gut hormones, and other biomolecules associated with diabetes and metabolic dysfunctions.
The attached paper, Development and Validation of Multiplex Assays for Human Diabetes Biomarkers describes a multiplex immunoassay for simultaneous quantitaton of diabetes and metabolic biomarkers in human serum and plasma of up to 12 targets, including adiponectin, adipsin, C-peptide, ghrelin, GIP, GLP-1, glucagon, insulin, leptin, PAI-1, resistin and visfatin.
The targets can also be multiplexed with other cytokine biomarkers which have been shown to play an important role in metabolic research and immune response. For more information on assays that allow for multiplexing cytokine and diabetes biomarkers see our previous post multiplexing cytokine and diabetes biomarkers.
Petri Dish Pancreas
Dr. Ian Rogers of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto is working on a replacement pancreas that would be grown in a lab and then placed in those with Type 1 diabetes to restore their insulin production.
Rogers’s team is building a pancreas out of a surgical sponge, a three-dimensional structure seeded with insulin-producing islet cells. The pancreas would be grown in the lab and then placed under the skin of those with Type 1 diabetes to restore their insulin production.
Read more from CBC regrowing body parts closer to reality
In salute of Dr. Rogers and those involved in diabetes research, we present you with “Weird Al” Yankovic’s tribute to the pancreas.
