Researchers Develop New Way to Watch Pancreatic Cells Package Insulin
The research marks a new way to understand diabetes, which kills 85,000 Americans each year.
Nearly a half century ago Robert Prisig in his seminal book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, taught us how seeing how something works makes it easier to manage. A team of scientists from the Bridge Institute at the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience are taking that advice to heart. They have for the first time actually looked at a pancreatic beta cell as it was packaging insulin and responding to a drug treatment. Their work marks a new way to understand diabetes, which kills nearly 85,000 Americans each year.
Kate White, Bridge Institute
"We can understand things much better when we have both biochemical data and pictures so we can see exactly what's going on inside the pancreatic beta cell. This gives us a whole new insight, and you always need fresh perspectives to look at a problem to find new solutions," said Kate White, Ph.D., lead author of the research, a USC assistant professor of molecular and computational biology, and director of the Pancreatic Beta Cell Consortium at the Bridge Institute.
Work by Dr. White and her team appears in the journal Science Advances. While researchers emphasize that these findings are not a cure for diabetes, the research provides new ways to study the cell to understand how drugs work, gains that can advance new treatments; this may include stem cells to manufacture an entire pancreas.