Killer Cells and Diabetes
- Reported, January 19, 2012
 (Ivanhoe
Newswire) -- Killer T-cells protect the body from disease, but a new study
suggests that these same cells, created to protect, may be inadvertently
destroying cells that produce insulin for the body.
Professor Andy Sewell, an expert in human T-cells from Cardiff University’s
School of Medicine and his diabetic expert colleagues, among them Professor Mark
Peakman from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical
Research Centre at King’s College and Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust
conducted a study to better understand the role of T-cells in the development of
Type 1 diabetes.
"Type 1 diabetes is a result of the body’s own immune system attacking and
destroying the cells in the pancreas that manufacture the hormone insulin.
Insulin controls blood sugar levels and a lack of insulin is fatal if
untreated," Professor Sewell was quoted as saying. Sewell and his team isolated
a T-cell from a patient with Type 1 diabetes to view a unique molecular
interaction which results in the killing of insulin-producing cells in the
pancreas.
"Our findings show how killer T-cells might play an important role in autoimmune
diseases like diabetes and we’ve secured the first ever glimpse of the mechanism
by which killer T-cells can attack our body cells to cause disease," Sewell
added.
Professor Peakman, co-author of the study, was quoted as saying, "This first
sight of how killer T-cells make contact with the cells that make insulin is
very enlightening, and increases our understanding of how Type 1 diabetes may
rise. Professors Sewell and Peakman and their team all hope that by gaining a
better understanding of this process it will put them in a much stronger
position to devise new ways to prevent or even halt the disease.
"This knowledge will be used in the future to help us predict who might get the
disease and also to develop new approaches to prevent it. Our aim is to catch
the disease early before too many insulin-producing cells have been damaged,"
said Peakman.
SOURCE: Cardiff University, January 2012
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WF Team
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