New Chch study of diabetes

Press, 10 January 1984, Page 18

New Chch study of diabetes

A Christchurch medical team is seeking the cause of diabetes with a new technique — “beads" that allows them to study the single insulin-producing cell.

Dr Russell Scott and his research team based at the Christchurch Clinical School will spend this year trying to find what substance in the blood of newly diagnosed diabetics kills off the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Past research has looked at the cells clumped together in their thousands to form glands called “islets of Langerhans.” “We are now saying for the 1980 s it is time to go to the single cell,” said Dr Scott. The method used to scatter the islets into individual cells and keep them apart in suspension is what makes the Christchurch study different. Researchers have been working on a process using carbohydrate complex “beads” during the last two years to look at the single insulin-producing cells. These are attracted to the larger beads and attach themselves to their protein coating.

Dr Scott said the beads had been used for other research but he knew of only one other diabetes team in the world looking at the same process. That was based at a large medical centre in San Diego, Southern California.

“Generally through our static population and smallness of size we do have an advantage in doing such studies as these,” he said.

If the project had no luck, it was still important for New Zealand to keep pace with overseas developments because a potential cure for diabetes was predicted within the next decade.

“People see some light att the end of the tunnel, but unless we are right into it by the time a cure comes, I am just not sure whether we will have enough people to utilise this technology,” Dr Scott said.

His was the only basic diabetes investigation unit in New Zealand, looking at the cell biology rather than clinical aspects of the disease. Most of the estimated $150,000 annual running costs .for the study came from the Medical Research Council.

Present medical thinking was that there was some form of an antibody or cell circulating in the body which slowly killed the insu-lin-producing cells. A person developed diabetes when 90 per cent of the cells, mainly in the pancreas, were destroyed. “We have been looking at the single cell and how it responds to various stimuli,

understanding what it does in a normal situation,” Dr Scott said. “Now we go on and look at what happens in the situation of disease.”

The Christchurch team has taken blood samples from nearly all those in the city area under the age of 20 who have been diagnosed

as insulin-requiring diabetics in the last 18 months. About 70 samples have been collected to date, a quarter of those from those

who also have relatives with the disease. Dr Scott said they would look at those families more closely.