Vanderbilt researchers have discovered details of pancreatic beta cell loss — and potential therapeutic targets — during conditions of overnutrition, as occurs in obesity.

Researchers with the Vanderbilt Diabetes Research and Training Center (DRTC) at Vanderbilt University Medical Center led a multisite study which has demonstrated that, when controlled and standardized, quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the pancreas is highly reproducible when using different MRI hardware and software at different geographic locations.

Images of cells and tissues are a critical part of biomedical research as they show which molecules or proteins are present and where these molecules are located in the tissue. Using increasingly sophisticated microscopes and imaging approaches, scientists can now look at more than 40 different molecules at once, an approach known as multi-plex imaging, where in the past they could only look at three or four molecules at a time.

The multicellular, 3-D structure of human pancreatic islets — the areas of the pancreas containing hormone-producing or endocrine cells — has presented challenges to researchers as they study and manipulate these cells’ function, but Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers have now developed a pseudoislet system that allows for much easier study of islet function.

Vanderbilt cell biologists are defining the factors that help beta cells in the pancreas stay healthy, secrete insulin and prevent diabetes initiation and progression.

Researchers with the Vanderbilt Diabetes Research and Training Center (DRTC) have discovered a progressive decline in pancreas volume over a one-year period in children and adolescents with newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes.

Vanderbilt investigators are defining the genetic programs that control the development of pancreatic beta cells — studies that could inform new cellular or regenerative therapies for diabetes.