Discoveries
Discovery may lead to preventive therapy for diabetes
People at risk for diabetes may someday have a new way of warding off the disease, thanks to Dana-Farber scientists' research into the intricacies of the immune system.
Brian Wilson, MD, PhD
The investigators found they were able to protect pre-diabetic mice from developing the illness by activating immune system cells known as iNKT cells. When they dismantled the activating signal, the animals developed full-blown diabetes. "As the disease progressed, the number of these cells decreased," reports the study's senior author, Brian Wilson, MD, PhD. "In mice that were resistant to the disease, however, the cells continued to accumulate.
"Because iNKT cells work in much the same way in mice and humans," he continues, "techniques for increasing the production of these cells could help with prevention in people who have a genetic risk of diabetes."
The job of iNKT cells is to police the immune system's response to infections and other disorders, ensuring that only diseased tissue is targeted for attack. Type I diabetes is an autoimmune disorder that occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. The loss of insulin impairs the body's ability to burn sugar, leading to problems such as kidney and nerve damage and vision loss.
Scientists have long known that a loss of iNKT cells causes diabetes to worsen in non-obese diabetic female mice, which have an inborn tendency to develop the disease. Fewer iNKT cells means fewer restraints on the immune system, increasing the chances of an errant attack on the pancreas. The Dana-Farber study revealed new details of the body's circuitry for activating iNKT cells and suggested how that circuitry could be used to hold diabetes at bay.
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
