Regulating insulin with glucose

Diabetes mellitus is a dreadful disease that is becoming a worldwide epidemic. The worldwide prevalence of this disease is likely to reach 4.4% by 2030. Insulin therapy is a mainstay in treating patients with diabetes mellitus. But the consequences of its actions on glucose are not perfect because it is difficult for patients to predict the exact dose of hormone to inject so that it matches the body's needs. If a mismatch occurs, it leads to hyper- or worst, hypo-glycaemia. Thus, interest to restore or mimic the body's ability to sense insulin action and in turn regulate levels of the hormone to avoid hyper- or hypo-glycaemia remains high.

Glucose control of pancreatic insulin secretion is a key step in regulating activity of the hormone. The use of glucose to manipulate secretion of engineered insulin from a non-pancreatic cell remains a challenge.

To address this issue, Liu et al. aimed to study new ways that enable glucose to regulate insulin release from non-islet cells. They created a model that attempts to mimic the initial aspect of pancreatic insulin release. They examined whether liver cell secretion of insulin derived from an engineered construct could be regulated by glucose. Their data show that the release of insulin expressed in liver cells can be regulated by glucose and this approach could be useful in devising new ways to treat diabetes mellitus.

Read the full article in Liu et al (2013) Journal of Molecular Endocrinology 50 337-346 DOI:10.1530/JME-12-0239