A brief history of immune recognition and tolerance of pancreatic islet transplants by Adam Burrack, PhD We’ve not spent much space in this blogs series describing how pancreatic islet transplants are destroyed. In one of our first blog posts, I described Doug Melton’s work producing patient-specific beta cells, but haven’t gotten into the details of […]
Category Archives: beta cells
Saturday Morning Research Review – October 15, 2016
Potential “phenotypic signature” of T cells in pediatric-onset type 1 diabetes by Adam Burrack, PhD Predictive markers of T cell responses against beta cells are a highly sought clinical diagnostic. Analysis of a validated, limited, set of cell surface proteins on T cells collected from peripheral blood would facilitate “risk assessment” in people at-risk of […]
Saturday Morning Research Review – October 8, 2016
Beta cells work harder in response to high-fat diet before they increase mass or divide by Adam Burrack, PhD It has been a long-standing question in the beta cell biology field how beta cells respond to metabolic stress – or high demand for insulin production. The answer to this question is directly relevant to the […]
Saturday Morning Research Review – October 1, 2016
Report on Human Islet Research Network, May 2016 meeting by Adam Burrack, PhD I recently had the chance to attend the annual meeting of the human islet research network in Bethesda, Maryland. This is a group of researchers funded through the National Institutes of Health, specifically the NIDDK and the Special Diabetes Program. The human islet […]
Saturday Morning Research Review – September 17, 2016
An important role for macrophage and T cell production of reactive oxygen species production in beta cell death by Adam Burrack, PhD Macrophages play a key role in diabetes onset in the mouse model of type 1 diabetes, the NOD mouse. Whether macrophages or T cells are the “final effector” of beta cell death is […]
Saturday Morning Research Review – October 24, 2015
YOUglycemia immunology of diabetes blog series Rachel Friedman, 2-photon microscopy, early T cell infiltration of pancreatic islets by Adam Burrack, PhD I was in elementary school when the book and movie Jurassic Park were released, and I was a fan of Michael Crichton’s science fiction since. To be honest much of my curiosity about the […]
Saturday Morning Research Review – October 3rd, 2015
Staging pre-type 1 diabetes, position statement from JDRF, ADA, and Endocrine Society by Adam Burrack, PhD Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is potentially a preventable disease. We know the genetics that determine risk of developing T1D well, but we cannot currently stop the cells of the immune system that kill beta cells in the pancreas. If […]
Saturday Morning Research Review – August 29, 2015
Roland Tisch, yin-yang of autoimmunity and cancer, intra-islet IL-2 promotes regulatory T cell function by Adam Burrack, PhD As our readers will recall, type 1 diabetes (T1D) results from T cell-mediated destruction of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. In a previous post I described the research program of Dr. Jeff Bluestone at UC-San Francisco, […]
Saturday Morning Research Review – June 27, 2015
YOUglycemia “science of type 1 diabetes” blog series Denise Faustman: BCG vaccine to cure autoimmune diabetes by Adam Burrack, PhD At the recent American Diabetes Association annual scientific sessions meeting, Denise Faustman’s group from Massachusetts General Hospital presented clinical trial data on an exciting idea to ‘reverse’ type 1 diabetes. This concept and its potential impact […]
Saturday Morning Research Review – May 30, 2015
Kevan Herold, Yale Immunology Department, multi-center disease onset studies, T cell depletion by Adam Burrack, PhD Readers familiar with this blog series will be aware that I have focused on T cells of the immune system, which appear to be the “final effectors” of the autoimmune response leading to development of type 1 diabetes (T1D). […]