IUPUI Researcher Receives Grant for Pancreas Work
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowAn assistant professor in biology at IUPUI has received a nearly $2 million grant to study how pancreas cells communicate to grow and function. Teresa Mastracci received the five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health for her work to develop strategies that regenerate insulin-producing cells that those with diabetes don’t have.
“We’re looking to examine how the pancreas naturally develops pre- and postnatally to help us understand how these cells grow and function,” Mastracci said. “Then, ideally, this information could be used to create therapies that would bring back the cells that are dying in people with diabetes.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says more than 34 million American adults have diabetes, which is the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S.
“The endocrine cells and exocrine cells in the pancreas do two very different things, so you’d think they don’t interact,” Mastracci said. “But what we’re starting to learn is that they are intimately linked and may produce critical signals that help each other grow.”
The new grant is expected to expand previous studies from Mastracci’s lab that identified a pathway integral to exocrine and endocrine cell growth.
“Our studies are showing us that if we manipulate the exocrine pancreas, we may also affect how the endocrine pancreas grows,” Mastracci said.
Mastracci says they hope to find what expands beta-cells, and to use to regenerate the cells lost in people living with diabetes.