The eye as a body window to diabetes: Pancreatic islet transplantation in the anterior chamber of the eye to treat diabetes mellitus

27 October 2022, 1.00 PM - 27 October 2022, 2.00 PM

Per-Olof Berggren, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

Lecture Theatre C42, Biomedical Sciences Building

Today, already more than 400 million people suffering from diabetes worldwide, and diabetes is spreading like an epidemic, challenging healthcare systems. For type 2 diabetes and its severe complications, the primary focus is to identify novel and more specific druggable targets to design new drugs for more effective treatments. In type 1 diabetes, a major problem is to improve the success rate of islet transplantation. It became clear that the liver is not the optimal site for islet transplantation, therefore, better loci are urgently required that support pancreatic islet function and survival. Since diabetes is a heterogeneous disease, there is an immediate need for the development of novel personalized pharmacological treatment strategies, calling for precise in vivo readout systems. By using the anterior chamber of the eye as a transplantation site and the cornea as a natural body window, we can image islet cell biology in vivo, non-invasively, longitudinally at single cell resolution. Using this in vivo imaging approach for metabolic islet cell imaging, reporter islet cell imaging, islet cell signaling, immune islet cell biology will be rpesented. Clinical islet transplantation in the eye and how this approach can be applied to discover key regulatory steps in islet cell signal-transduction will be presented. Finally, I will provide insights into exploiting this living window approach for treating the disease.

 

Host: Imre Berger

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Alan Cheung

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