News from the UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence

The laboratory of vascular surgeon-scientist Tammy Nguyen, MD, PhD, developed a novel method in collaboration with Dr. Silvia Corvera’s lab to collect human stem cells directly from the bone marrow of people who underwent lower extremity amputations for non-healing wounds and grow them in her lab. Her research is examining why the immune cells of people living with diabetes behave differently than those without diabetes. In a newly published study, she identified that there are two different types of stem cell populations that are located within separate parts of bone marrow in the human leg. So far Dr. Nguyen has learned that stem cells derived from yellow/fatty marrow proliferate more and are more responsive. Currently she is asking additional questions in her lab to compare the marrow and immune cell development between people living with diabetes and those without diabetes.

A branch from the “Tree of Hippocrates” from an Oriental plane tree on the island of Kos, Greece was planted on the UMass Chan Medical School campus.  According to legend, Hippocrates of Kos, who is considered to be the father of medicine, educated his students near the tree more than 2,500 years ago. Three Diabetes Center of Excellence researchers spoke at the planting ceremony. 

John Haley, a PhD candidate in the Guertin lab, was named the 2023 Emerging Scientist in Metabolism by Weill Cornell Medicine.  He was awarded the top prize in a national competition for senior graduate students who are conducting metabolism research. Haley plans to pursue post-doctoral training focusing on the intersection of metabolism and signaling.

Shrewsbury High School Chemistry teacher Jennifer Cuddy will return for a second summer in the Diabetes Center of Excellence research laboratories thanks to an American Association of Immunologists High School Teachers Program in Immunology Award.  She will participate in studies investigating the effects of human immune cells on stem cell-derived pancreatic islets.  The program will provide Ms. Cuddy with new skills that she can incorporate into her high school classroom.  She will also attend an American Association of Immunologists conference in Los Angeles in July with other teachers from throughout the country.

A pilot Young Adult & Youth Transition Clinic for young people struggling with diabetes management is being funded by The George F. and Sybil H. Fuller Foundation.  The program is designed to help ease the progression from pediatric care to the adult care clinic.  It will be made available to anyone in the community between the ages of 18-24 living with either type 1 or type 2 diabetes.

Sam Redick, PhD, led the effort to develop and grow stem cell-derived islets at the UMass Chan Diabetes Center of Excellence for various collaborative research projects, including genetically engineering them to become undetected by the immune system. Transplanting stem cell-derived into a person living with type 1 diabetes, without them requiring toxic immunosuppressive therapy, would be a life-changing curative therapy.  That is the core focus of the JDRF Center of Excellence in New England led by UMass DCOE co-director Dr. David Harlan. Learn more about Sam and her T1D research

This study conducted in the Brehm & Greiner labs and published in the The Journal of Leukocyte Biology describes the creation of a novel “humanized” mouse model that enables specific targeting of the human toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) pathway in mice. These molecules help the immune system recognize infections and other harmful threats. Their new model allows scientists to test therapies in a human specific manner and show treatment efficacy against a human tumor.

Emilee Herringshaw is a UMass Chan Medical School student living with type 1 diabetes who is working towards a career in dermatology. She was awarded a clinical research grant by The American Contact Dermatitis Society to create a pilot study designed to evaluate skin reactions to continuous glucose monitors. Patients at the UMass Memorial Diabetes Center of Excellence are invited to participate and the data will be analyzed looking at all available devices, various scenarios & interventions.

The fourth annual Herman G. Berkman Diabetes Clinical Innovation Fund grant was awarded to optometrist Juan Ding, OD, PhD and co-investigator James Ledwith, MD, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. Their project titled "Efficacy and Impact of Implementing an AI Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Program in Family Medicine Clinics" offers a path to identify eye disease and improve comprehensive care for people living with diabetes.

Brown adipose tissue (fat tissue) is known to burn fat and improve metabolism while and white adipose tissue stores fat. Scientists are exploring cellular and molecular mechanisms that control brown fat, and how to convert white adipocytes into brown-like adipocytes. A newly published study in Nature Communications led by Qingbo Chen, PhD, describes a brown fat-enriched adipokine they call Adissp (Adipose-secreted signaling protein) that is a key regulator for white adipose tissue thermogenesis and glucose homeostasis.

The Diabetes Center of Excellence at UMass Chan Medical School received a $250,000 donation from the Arthur M. and Martha R. Pappas Foundation.  The funds were used to purchase and maintain a state-of-the-art flow cytometer to characterize cells and their functional and signaling properties.  It provides quantitative data on immune cell and pancreatic islet cell phenotypes to facilitate the analysis of samples and greatly expand our research team’s capacity to rapidly screen experimental samples. 
FULL STORY & VIDEO ABOUT DR. ARTHUR PAPPAS

Viral infections continue to be linked to the development of type 1 diabetes, yet human immune responses to viruses and how that leads to the destruction of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas is still unknown.  The laboratory of Jennifer Wang, MD, investigated inflammatory pathways because viruses can trigger inflammation that damages the pancreas.  The research focused on early events leading to autoimmune responses to viruses with the ultimate goal of therapeutics that could target inflammation before T1D manifests.

The 6th diabetic community health clinic was a multidisciplinary outreach event with providers from the UMass Memorial Diabetes Center of Excellence, vascular surgery, podiatry & more. They volunteered at the Athol Area YMCA to provide free exams and point of care testing. PHOTOS

Teplizumab (Tzield) was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to delay the onset of type 1 diabetes when identified in the pre-symptomatic stage. A statement was released by the UMass Memorial Diabetes Center of Excellence regarding the new medication.

The Joseph “Nuzzy” Nozzolillo Memorial Foundation added a $25K donation in 2022 to their ongoing support of the UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence, raising their five-year fundraising total to $85,560. The 5th annual Nuzzy Memorial Golf Tournament and third “Rockin’ for Nuzzy” fundraiser concert were held by Joe's family and friends who are grateful for the care he received and optimistic about the diabetes research taking place at the UMass Chan DCOE.  PHOTOS & VIDEO

A five-year grant from the NIH/NIAMS was awarded to John Harris, MD, PhD, Founding Director of the Vitiligo Clinic & Research Center, and Autoimmune Therapeutics Institute at UMass Chan Medical School. The project is entitled Dissecting Functional Autoimmunity through High-Resolution Multiomics in a Vitiligo Center of Research Translation. Dr. Kent is leading Project 1, Autoreactive T Cell Function in Vitiligo.

The Czech lab examined the metabolic regulation of adipocytes by insulin receptor signaling and the cAMP signaling pathway in a review article published in the journal Trends in Cell Biology. The two major signaling networks regulate virtually every organ and/or cell type in the human body.  While the two signaling pathways intercommunicate regularly in fat cells, published data has shown they typically counteract one other in most cellular processes. Their opposite roles are indispensable for adipocyte physiology and metabolic homeostasis. Together they constitute what the Czech lab calls “the adipocyte supersystem.” However, their review highlights a set of genes that are known to promote metabolic health and were activated by both insulin and catecholamines in the same way.  

Sally Kent, PhD was awarded a Multi-Principal Investigator grant from the NIH/NIDDK entitled Extracellular Vesicle-mediated islet immune cross talk in type 1 diabetes pathogenesis. The project will examine the function of extracellular vesicles originating directly from pancreatic islets in people with  type 1 diabetes. The goal of these studies is to understand their functional role in the autoimmune process and to provide biomarkers for disease development.

Dr. O’Connor was co-recipient of the UMass Memorial Medical Group’s Prize for Academic Collaboration and Excellence (PACE) Award. It supports physicians in cutting-edge research and encourages interdepartmental collaboration. His project is studying the benefits of using widely available wearable devices such as smart watches, to protect people who are living with diabetes, from dangerous hypoglycemia. A pilot study of people with type 1 diabetes who are at risk for hypoglycemia will create an optimized algorithm for detecting hypoglycemia based on smart watch data.

The study aims to generate CAR T cell variants that would target and eliminate islet specific autoreactive T cells in people with type 1 diabetes. A grant from the NIH/NIDDK with Multi-Principal Investigators was awarded to investigate CAR T-cell technology as a potential T1D therapy. 

In a newly published study in the FASEB journal, the laboratories of Michael Brehm, PhD and Dale Greiner, PhD describe a novel humanized mouse model developed with improved Natural Killer (NK) cell acceptance and functionality.  Their data explains the potential for this in vivo model to study human NK cell biology and to test new human-specific immune-therapies that target NK cells. 

Vascular surgeon-scientist Tammy Nguyen, MD, PhD, is the recipient of a K08 Clinical Investigator Award from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to advance her independent clinical research. Dr. Nguyen wants to understand why people with diabetes have a difficult time with wound healing, particularly foot ulcers. She’s studying the effect of type 2 diabetes on the development of the immune system, with the goal of designing targeted therapies to combat poor wound healing. As the Medical Director of the Lower Extremity Wound Clinic at UMass Memorial Health, she continues to perform surgeries on people with diabetes who developed uncontrolled infections that led to amputations. 

A significant percentage of people living with type 2 diabetes also have too much fat accumulated in their liver that can develop into a condition called nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). It’s characterized by severe liver inflammation and fibrosis that can lead to cirrhosis and may require a liver transplantation. Currently, there is no medication for NASH. To better understand how a medicine might be developed, the Czech lab studied fat production in the liver from carbohydrates by disrupting an enzyme that helps to convert blood glucose into fat in obese mice. Results of their research is published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Meet Clinical Research Assistant Lucy Ding and learn about two studies she's involved with that are designed to help hospitalized patients living with diabetes.  One is a randomized clinical trial that provides continuous glucose monitors to people with diabetes who are currently not using one and arrive at the Emergency Room with high or low blood sugar, or other diabetes related complications. The other study is implementing a carbohydrate counting system for hospitalized inpatients with diabetes throughout the UMass Memorial Health system.

The Jason Kim laboratory welcomes visiting professors from Kosin University College of Medicine in South Korea. Both physician-scientists will be conducting diabetes research at UMass Chan Medical School through 2023.