Insulin News and Research

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Insulin is a hormone that is needed to convert glucose, starches and other food into energy needed for daily life. Insulin allows cells to use glucose for fuel and is secreted by beta cells in the islets of Langerhans. The release of insulin from the pancreas is stimulated by increased blood glucose, vagal nerve stimulation, and other factors. Insulin is obtained from various animals and available in a variety of preparations. Commercial insulin preparations differ in a number of ways, including differences in the animal species from which they are obtained; their purity, concentration, and solubility; and the time of onset and duration of their biologic action. An oral hypoglycemic agent is not a form of insulin therapy.

Glucose-Sensing Neurons May Play a Role in Regulating Blood Sugar

The body's blood glucose level needs to be maintained in a relatively narrow range. It cannot be too high, as it can lead to diabetes, and it cannot be too low because it can cause fainting or even death.

12 Jul 2023

Glutaminase 2 Plays a Key Role in Glucose Homeostasis

Glutaminase 2 (GLS2) is a master regulator of glutaminolysis. GLS2 converts glutamine to glutamate, thereby playing a role in cellular energy production. GLS2 is abundant in the liver, and is also found in pancreatic β-cells. However, the role of GLS2 in pancreatic islets – in which both ɑ- and β- cells are present – associated with glucose metabolism is currently unknown.

6 Jul 2023

Water Fasting Offers Short-Term Weight Loss, But No Long-Term Benefits

Water fasts -; where people consume nothing but water for several days -; might help you lose weight, but it's unclear how long you'll keep it off, according to research from the University of Illinois Chicago.

30 Jun 2023

Disclosing the Key Role of Mitofusin 2 Cellular Makeup in Interconnecting Organelles Within Cells

Researchers at IRB Barcelona, the University of Barcelona (UB), VIMM, and the University of Padua unveil the key role of Mitofusin 2 cellular makeup in interconnecting organelles within cells.

29 Jun 2023

New Data Shows Gene Expression at Different Stages of Pregnancy

While the exterior features of a woman can alter throughout pregnancy, scientists are surprisingly ignorant about the interior biological changes that take place.

14 Jun 2023

Lundquist Institute Contributes to Genetic Study of Insulin Response to a Glucose Challenge

The Lundquist Institute (TLI) announced that its Institute for Translational Genomics and Populations Sciences contributed to a new study published today in Nature Genetics of the DNA of more than 55,000 people worldwide.

12 Jun 2023

How Do Humans Maintain a Healthy Blood Sugar Level After Meals?

A study of more than 55,000 people’s DNA from around the world has given insight into how humans maintain appropriate blood sugar levels after eating, with implications for the current understanding of how the process goes awry in type 2 diabetes.

9 Jun 2023

The Association Between Type 2 Diabetes Treatment Response and Genetic Variants

People who are at a high risk of developing type 2 diabetes can be prescribed a variety of medications to decrease blood sugar levels, but it is not always apparent which people would benefit from which treatments the most.

6 Jun 2023

Charting a High-Resolution Roadmap for Regeneration of Pancreatic β Cells

At the Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health (SINH) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), a research group headed by Professor Zhen Shao and the collaborators plotted a high-resolution roadmap for the process of pancreatic β cell regeneration by in vivo transdifferentiation from adult acinar cells with the help of a single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technology.

31 May 2023

Determining Disease Progression in Patients with Recent-Onset Type 1 Diabetes

A gene expression signature that has the potential to forecast the advance of type 1 diabetes has been determined by scientists from Turku Bioscience Centre and InFLAMES Flagship at the University of Turku in Finland.

30 May 2023

Researchers Advance the Breeding of High-Resistant Starch Rice

Researchers have demonstrated that the loss of function of two paralogous starch biosynthesis genes increases the amount of resistant starch (RS) in cooked rice.

8 May 2023

Researchers Map GCK Gene Variants to Better Diagnose Hereditary Diseases

Researchers at the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, have now contributed to solving this problem for a specific gene called GCK. The study has just been published in Genome Biology.

4 May 2023

Development of Biocomputing’s Third Approach: Trumpet

Biological computing or biocomputing can revolutionize computers and medicine from early diagnosis and internal cure of diseases to futuristic applications like expanding human memory.

2 May 2023

Designing a Lipid Nanoparticle to Safely Deliver mRNA to the Pancreas

Therapeutics that use mRNA-;like some of the COVID-19 vaccines-;have enormous potential for the prevention and treatment of many diseases.

4 Apr 2023

Two subtypes of cells that produce insulin discovered

A team of scientists from the Van Andel Institute and the Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology and Epigenetics uncovered two unique subtypes of insulin-producing beta cells, or ß cells, each having important traits that could potentially be used to better understand and treat Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.

30 Mar 2023

BetaLife and A*STAR team up to accelerate the development of new cell-based therapy for diabetes

Up-and-coming local biotech startup BetaLife Pte Ltd ("BetaLife") is collaborating with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) to accelerate the development of next generation cell-based therapy for diabetes.

22 Mar 2023

Keck Medicine of USC launches clinical trial investigating innovative procedure to control Type 2 diabetes

More than 37 million Americans have diabetes, and approximately 90-95% have Type 2 diabetes.

21 Mar 2023

Losing a productive type of beta cell may contribute to the development of diabetes

Multiple types of beta cells produce insulin in the pancreas, helping to balance blood sugar levels. Losing a particularly productive type of beta cell may contribute to the development of diabetes, according to a new study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators.

17 Mar 2023

Artificial pancreas helps improve blood sugar control in children with type 1 diabetes

An artificial pancreas originally developed at the University of Virginia Center for Diabetes Technology improves blood sugar control in children ages 2 to 6 with type 1 diabetes, according to a new study.

16 Mar 2023

Study: Oral verapamil improves the pancreas' insulin secretion in children with newly-diagnosed TID

Published in JAMA, a University of Minnesota led study shows that verapamil, a drug commonly used to treat high blood pressure and heart conditions, can have a beneficial effect on the pancreas in children with newly-diagnosed type 1 diabetes (T1D).

27 Feb 2023