Dr. Carol Huang
This research grant is funded by the Canadian Diabetes Association
Polly VandenBerg, Manager Research Knowledge Translation
When we eat, our bodies process certain foods into glucose, which causes blood glucose levels to rise. Blood glucose levels are regulated with help from the hormone insulin. Insulin, which is made and released by beta cells in the pancreas, tells our cells to either use glucose as fuel or store it for later use. Type 1 diabetes is caused by a person’s own immune system mistakenly attacking and destroying their beta cells. Type 2 diabetes develops when the beta cells do not make enough insulin, or the body does not properly use the insulin that is made.
In an ideal situation, diabetes might be reversed if researchers could find a way to tell the body to make enough beta cells to meet the body’s insulin needs. Dr. Carol Huang, at the University of Calgary, hopes to understand how molecules in the body, such as growth factors or hormones, could increase beta cell numbers. She hopes to be able to apply this knowledge to design new drugs that would stimulate the body to make more beta cells. If successful, these kinds of drugs could be used to control or reverse diabetes.
Recently, Dr. Huang has found that the pregnancy hormone, prolactin, is necessary for keeping blood glucose in the normal range in pregnant mice. Prolactin does this by causing beta cells to divide, which results in more beta cells and, therefore, higher amounts of insulin secretion. Based on this discovery, Dr. Huang and her team believe that prolactin may be able to be used to slow the progression of, or possibly even reverse, diabetes.
During the course of this research grant, Dr. Huang and her team will test prolactin as a treatment in mouse models of type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
In a mouse model of type 1 diabetes, Dr. Huang will use a drug called antiCD3 (a drug that is currently in clinical trials to become a type 1 diabetes treatment). AntiCD3 has been shown to stop the immune system from attacking our beta cells and to restore insulin production in mice that have been recently diagnosed with diabetes. Dr. Huang will investigate if adding prolactin to antiCD3 treatment will improve how well the drug antiCD3 works to improve diabetes. Dr. Huang will also investigate an obesity-related model of type 2 diabetes to find out if prolactin can lower blood glucose by increasing the number of beta cells in the pancreas, which will therefore increase the amount of insulin produced.
These experiments will explore if prolactin is an effective treatment for diabetes, and the results will allow Dr. Huang and her team to determine if prolactin or related hormones could be useful as anti-diabetes drugs.