Knowing when to fold

A team from the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) has linked two genes involved in the unfolded protein stress response to the fragility of pancreatic β cells involved in both Type I and Type II diabetes, and developed a mouse model that could provide a new tool for identifying drugs for both forms of the disease.

While Type I diabetes involves autoimmune destruction of pancreatic β cells, resulting in insulin deficiency, Type II diabetes begins as a metabolic disease in which the liver fails to respond to insulin. But according to Adrian Liston, the principal investigator on the study, the diseases converge in the later phase when Type II progresses to the point that pancreatic β cells start dying off and don't produce enough insulin. Liston is a research professor at VIB...