Press Release

Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of California, San Francisco publish concurrent results in the same August edition of Cell Metabolism

Contact:     
Tara Wilcox-Ghanoonparvar      
(212) 479-7524  
twilcox-ghanoonparvar@jdrf.org     

New York, NY, August 7, 2012--When JDRF-funded research teams from two separate universities met three years ago, they learned that they were on similar paths in their attempt to discover the link connecting beta cell stress with inflammation and beta cell death in type 1 diabetes (T1D). Rather than racing to be the first to reveal preliminary findings, however, the teams from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis decided that their cooperation would provide a more comprehensive understanding of the basis of the disease and would thus be more beneficial to diabetes research. The two labs moved forward with their separate studies, communicating regularly to exchange new findings. In the end, both teams had independently discovered how the beta cell protein TXNIP links cell stress with inflammation and cell death. Both studies will be published in the August 8^th print edition of Cell Metabolism, and are available online (www.cell.com) from today.

"Inflammation is a major factor in the death of insulin-producing beta cells during the progression of type 1 diabetes; however, the mechanisms initiating inflammation in type 1 diabetes were elusive," said Fumihiko Urano, M.D., Ph.D., primary investigator of the study at Washington University. "We discovered that beta cell stress plays an important role in the initiation of inflammation through TXNIP."

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