Brain regions mapped to aid future diabetes therapies and studies

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The landmark 13-year study, published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, describes how the team used careful microscopic analysis to identify specific cell populations in the brain that appear to respond to rapid changes in blood sugar.

Arshad M. Khan, Ph.D., UTEP associate professor of biological sciences, and a team from his lab, led by doctoral student Geronimo Tapia, have spent the past decade continuing work first done by student researchers at the University of Southern California (USC), where Khan worked before joining the UTEP faculty. Along with the help of two additional team members: UTEP Research Assistant Professor Sivasai Balivada, Ph.D., and Richard H. Thompson, Ph.D. from USC. — the team discovered what they believe may be populations of glucose-sensitive cells in the brain and carefully mapped their locations in an open-access brain atlas.

The study results represent a significant step toward uniform global brain mapping and assessment of cellular responses to blood sugar in diabetic patients, Khan explained.

“I am grateful for the hard work of all my collaborators over the years, both when I was at USC and now here at UTEP,” Khan said. “Finally, knowing the exact coordinates of these structures in an open access brain atlas means that the scientific community can now use this spatial knowledge for refined guidance of future clinical or therapeutic interventions for people experiencing blood sugar fluctuations and prediabetes.” “.

Khan added: “Finding these cells is a bit like monitoring the fuel sensors in a car when their fuel levels go up or down. The next step will be to find the wiring that connects these sensors to other parts of the brain, a task for which We’re already working hard.”

Khan’s team was able to track blood sugar changes in sensitive regions of the brain within 15 minutes, a process that previously took hours due to limitations of the biomarkers used to detect these changes.

The locus coeruleus (Latin for “blue spot”), a region of the brain named for the unique color of its tissue, produces norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in arousal, attention, and the body’s response to stress. . In the study, the locus coeruleus was found to be one of the few regions that responds early during blood sugar swings, suggesting that it is an important trigger center for people with type I and type II diabetes. when they experience life-threatening changes in their blood glucose. Such disturbances often occur when diabetics self-inject insulin, a hormonal treatment that normalizes their high blood sugar levels but can also drive them dangerously low if dosed incorrectly.

New knowledge of that region of the brain could help researchers monitor and intervene during the most dangerous effects of swings in blood sugar that arise as a common complication of diabetes management.

“This research is very important in our border region because there is a high prevalence of obesity and diabetes in our communities,” said Jessica Salcido Padilla, a UTEP graduate student in the Khan Lab and co-author of the study. “Our goal is to identify exactly where certain processes occur in the brain so that we can develop therapies, technologies or pharmaceuticals that help.”

Khan’s research was supported by three grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and by funding and imaging facilities available from the UTEP Center for Border Biomedical Research, which focuses on biomedical research relevant to the Paso del Norte region. . NIH funding included resources for microscopic imaging and analysis, mapping software and computational tools used by graduate student research assistants and research staff, and tuition support for the students who produced the data for this study.

“This important work by Dr. Khan and his team exemplifies our college’s, and our university’s, commitment to advancing discovery of public value,” said Robert Kirken, Ph.D., dean of UTEP’s College of Science . “I sincerely congratulate you on the fruitful conclusion of his study, and am hopeful and excited about the clinical therapies that his findings will enable.”