News from the UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence

The UMass Diabetes Diabetes Center of Excellence once again hosted the Central MA Step Out Walk to Stop Diabetes. The signature fundraising event for the American Diabetes Association takes place on the UMass Chan Medical School campus. This year, more than 1000 people participated, including DCOE faculty, staff & families. Entertainment included representatives from the Red Sox, Patriots, New England Revolution, Worcester Bravehearts & Worcester Railers.  PHOTOS 

Sally C. Kent, PhD, and Jenny Aurielle B. Babon, PhD, have isolated and characterized a large bank of live islet-infiltrating T cells directly from the islets of tissue donors with type 1 diabetes. The findings, published in Nature Medicine, have direct implications for the design of therapies and preventative strategies for people with type 1 diabetes and those at risk for developing it. 

The Corvera Lab at UMass Chan Medical School's Diabetes Center of Excellence shed light on the benefits of beige fat. Our body's fat has the ability to generate beige fat, which could potentially be deployed within ourselves to treat diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease.

Sally Kent, PhD, a scientist at the UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence, was recognized by the Network for Pancreatic Organ Donors with Diabetes with a Pioneer Award for her "continued dedication to create a world free of type 1 diabetes.”  Jenny Aurielle Babon, PhD, a postdoc in the Kent Lab, presented some of their latest research during nPOD's Annual Scientific Meeting.   

Nancy Morris, Adult Nurse Practitioner in the UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence, was awarded the Excellence in Nursing Education Award from The American Nursing Association of Massachusetts.  It honors nurse educators for teaching, research and practice, recognizing innovative approaches to facilitate learning and professional development.  

Roger J. Davis, PhD was elected into the National Academy of Sciences.  Membership in the NAS is one of the highest honors bestowed upon a scientist in the United States.  He joins four UMass Chan Medical School colleagues who have received membership in recognition of their for outstanding contributions to original research.  His work to explain the molecular mechanism by which inflammation contributes to diabetes, cancer and stroke has been among the most important in this field for more than two decades.  READ MORE

Many patients do not understand the role and capabilities of a nurse practitioner (NP) when it comes to diabetes care.  NPs are taught both the medical model and the nursing model of care.  The scope of practice of a nurse practitioner varies from state to state. Meet Christine and learn how she provides care to patients at the UMass Memorial Diabetes Center of Excellence.   

Thymus development research in the lab of René Maehr, PhD was featured as the cover story in Immunity.  Single-cell RNA sequencing was used to illustrate a framework for biological discovery and molecular analysis of thymus organogenesis (the production and development of the organ).  READ MORE 

Diabetes education has been shown to lower A1c by as much as 1%, which is similar to adding a medication but without side effects. Research has shown people who received diabetes education are more likely to utilize primary care and preventative services, take medications as prescribed and control their blood glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. As a result, those people have lower health costs.  The UMass Memorial Diabetes Center of Excellence offers an extensive education program covering a variety of topics. Both one-on-one sessions and group workshops are available.  

Silvia Corvera, MD, and Michael Czech, PhD, are investigating whether technologies developed in their labs will harness beige fat’s ability to burn energy and accelerate metabolism in order to improve the body’s response to sugar and lower blood glucose levels.   

The First Annual Joe “Nuzzy” Memorial Golf Tournament raised $10,500, which was generously donated to the UMass Memorial Diabetes Center of Excellence (DCOE), to be used for continued patient care.  The family wants the money to help others being treated for diabetes at UMass Memorial.  They recently toured our research laboratories, and were impressed with what they saw.   
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The laboratory of Silvia Corvera, MD, was featured on WCVB-TV/ABC in Boston and WJAR-TV/NBC of Providence about their research in which they are transforming white fat into beige fat, to harness its ability to burn energy, accelerate metabolism and fight disease.  VIDEO 

Apoptosis of CD8 T cells is an essential mechanism that maintains immune system homeostasis, prevents autoimmunity, and reduces immunopathology.  Research from the Brehm and Davis laboratories at the UMass  Diabetes Center of Excellence, was published in The Journal of Immunology.  

Studying the islets of people with type 1 diabetes, the laboratories of David Harlan, MD and Sally Kent, PhD definitively put to rest a three decades old debate about whether beta cells express important immune genes called “human leukocyte antigen class II” (HLA Class II).

The second annual Herman G. Berkman Diabetes Clinical Innovation Fund grant was awarded to Leslie J. Domalik, MD and co-investigator Asem Ali, MD.  Read about their project, intended to improve blood glucose control for all patients admitted to UMass Memorial hospitals who are living with diabetes. 

Dr. Corvera’s lab determined that there are more types of fat cells in the human body than originally thought. They play different roles in how they affect metabolism.  They're now investigating human cell therapy, which consists of using the body’s own cells to increase metabolism, as a possible treatment for type 2 diabetes or its complications.  

UMass Memorial Diabetes Center of Excellence education workshops use Conversation Maps® to teach a variety of diabetes topics to help people make lifestyle changes as part of their self-management.   

Dr. David Harlan welcomed his longtime friend and fellow distinguished physician/scientist, Carl H. June, MD, to speak at the UMass Chan Medical School Department of Medicine Grand Rounds. They worked closely throughout the 1990s when they led the U.S. Navy’s “Immune Cell Biology Program." Dr. June is the director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and is best known for his pioneering work developing CAR T-cell therapy for leukemia treatment. VIDEO

Sally C. Kent, PhD, was named the George F. and Sybil H. Fuller Foundation Term Chair in Diabetes. Dr. Kent studies autoimmune response in type 1 diabetes. Her lab is credited with uncovering new information on how autoreactive T cells target beta cells in islets, a breakthrough that will contribute to the design of therapies for people with type 1 diabetes.  

David Harlan, MD, interviewed Nobel Prize laureate Wally Gilbert, PhD, 40 years after the first human insulin for diabetes treatment was genetically engineered, thanks in part to his pioneering work in DNA sequencing. Dr. Gilbert is now an accomplished artist and after the interview they toured his impressive art studio in Boston. VIDEO

Type 2 diabetes research in the laboratory of Michael Czech, PhD, includes studying the behavior and function of the various cells that make up adipose tissue, with a goal of improving systemic metabolism in obesity.  They contributed some of their lab's RNAi technology to a study published in The Journal of Immunology.  

A new technique to study human cells and tissues was recently developed at the UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence. It’s another step forward in the continued effort to examine the insulin producing beta cells of humans living with type 1 diabetes and to learn more about the autoimmune attack associated with the disease. The new method allows our scientists to recover and further examine sufficient amounts of living human cells that they previously transplanted into our novel human immune models.   

The Maehr Lab is developing human thymus glands using stem cells from the blood of volunteer participants. They'll be inserted into our humanized immune systems, along with insulin producing beta cells and immune cells created from the stem cells of those same blood donors. This will allow our scientists to study the interaction between an individual’s own cells, to investigate how and why the autoimmune attack is taking place. Once it’s determined what’s causing type 1 diabetes, we can then begin to test therapies within our humanized immune models.  

A study by Camila Martinez Calejman, PhD, published in the journal Nature Communications revealed an unexpected link between mTOR signaling and the synthesis of Acetyl-CoA, a molecule with critical roles in carbohydrate and lipid metabolism and the epigenetic control of gene expression.  It describes the importance of this link in brown adipose tissue, but the implications may extend to understanding other aspects of type 2 diabetes and cancer.   

The UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence established The Glass Family Fellowship in Diabetes Research, through a gift from Scott and Patricia Glass. It was awarded to Richard A. Siller, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Maehr Lab. He's eager to collaborate with his fellow lab members to work toward creating a fully functional human thymus over the the next two years at the UMass Chan Medical School.