Australian scientists make important finding in critical auto-immune disease 3 November 2010 Australian scientists at Sydney’s Garvan Institute of Medical Research have made an important finding about Type 1 diabetes. This research, which will lead to a closer understanding of how the disease develops, has just been published in the prestigious European Journal of Immunology. Diabetes is a chronic disease that occurs either when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin or when the body cannot effectively use the insulin it produces. In Type 1 diabetes the body attacks and destroys its own insulin-producing cells. To control the disease, patients have to have blood glucose monitoring and insulin injections for the rest of their lives. Dr Lewis Cox and Dr Pablo Silveira, from the Garvan Institute have identified two chromosomal regions in mice that control the ability of beta cell reactive B cells to interact with T cells, and determine whether or not Type 1 diabetes develops. “In any disease process, our T cells and B cells communicate with each other by sending signals,” said Dr Silveira. In Type 1 diabetes, B cells start to see insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas as ‘the enemy’, and recruit T cells to join forces and kill these cells. “We looked at B cells recognising beta cells from healthy mice and from mice with a genetic predisposition to developing diabetes,” Dr Silveira said. “Each received the same type of T cell help, but the B cells responded very differently, showing us that the genes involved are B cell intrinsic.” It is estimated that at least 220 million people around the world suffer from diabetes.* The Garvan Institute is one of Australia’s largest medical research institutions, with over 500 scientists, students and support staff. The Institute’s main research programs are in Cancer, Diabetes & Obesity, Immunology and Inflammation, Osteoporosis & Bone Biology, and Neuroscience. *Statistics rarely delineate between Type 1 diabetes (early onset) and Type 2 diabetes (adult onset). More information |