New screening platform can be used to discover more effective drugs for type 1 diabetes
With nearly 2 million Americans battling type 1 diabetes, it is no surprise that clinical therapies for the disease are constantly evolving and improving. In type 1 diabetes mellitus, the body's immune system attacks and destroys insulin-producing β-cells. As a result, people living with type 1 diabetes lose insulin secretion and encounter difficulty regulating glucose levels -- especially after meals.
Drugs developed to proliferate β-cells often are inefficient and have off-target effects that can dysregulate other cell types and pancreatic hormone production. To address these issues, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Broad Institute teamed up to design next-generation β-cell-targeting proliferators: zinc-binding prodrugs (ZnPD). To achieve this, the researchers engineered a new screening platform, the Disque Platform, to better represent β-cells in the lab. Utilizing the Disque Platform, researchers identified a ZnPD drug which exhibited a 2.4-fold increase in β-cell numbers in culture, out-performing its native drug, harmine, and avoiding off-target effects. Results are published in Science Advances.