Diabetes treatment using regulatory protein being trialled

Researchers at the Children’s Hospital in Boston are trialling a new approach to treating both type 1 and 2 diabetes without the use of insulin . The study has shown that blood sugar levels can be normalised without involving insulin, which is hoped could provide a new therapeutic approach for treating diabetes .
Lead researcher, Umut Ozcan, who is a physician in the Division of Endocrinology at the Children’s Hospital, has revealed in the laboratory that when the regulatory protein XBP-1s activated artificially in the liver, it can normalise high levels of blood sugar in both lea, insulin-deficient type 1 diabetic mice and obese, insulin-resistant type 2 diabetic mice. These findings show that approaches for increasing XBP-1s activity could benefit patients with diabetes.
Ozcan commented “Activating XBP-1s could be another approach to type 2 diabetes, and could be very beneficial for type 1 diabetes, too. Even in mice with no insulin, increased expression of XBP-1s lowered the blood glucose level significantly.”
He added “This suggests that approaches that activate XBP-1s in the liver of type 1 diabetics could control blood glucose levels, with potentially much less requirement for insulin.”
He hopes now to uncover realistic ways to activate XBP-1s that could be clinically developed.