IUIBS: Diabetes and Applied Endocrinology

Affiliated Research areas

• Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
• Pharmacology and toxicology
• Public health and epidemiology
• Veterinary and applied animal sciences

Scientific Areas

• Not available

Keywords

• eHealth
• Digital Health
• MicroRNA
• Diabetes in pregnancy
• Intrauterine programming
• macrosomía
• gestational diabetes
• Refinement
• animal models
• Familial hypercholesterolaemia
• Diabetes
• Genetic isolation
• Diabetes
• PRO
• HRQOL

Summary

- : The epidemiological study of familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) in Gran Canaria led to the discovery of a mutation with a founder effect. Preliminary studies suggest that this mutation is associated with an increased risk of diabetes.
- Drug repositioning for the treatment of Parkinson's disease: Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder. According to Eurostat, prevalence in the 60-69-year old population is estimated to be approximately 1%, rising to 2.7% in those over 80. There are more than one million people living with PD today in Europe. With an ageing population, this number is estimated to double by 2030. There is no cure for PD and available treatments only help to relieve symptoms, failing in counteracting, delaying or stopping disease progression. Therefore, it is urgent to develop new therapeutic strategies. To achieve this, the use of PD models in simple organisms like Drosophila allows performing fast high-throughput screens (HTS) of compounds. Besides, large-scale metabolomics studies in such models are also incredibly helpful to identify new therapeutic targets. In collaboration with Nuria Paricio¿s group from the Dept of Genetics at the University of Valencia, who has great expertise in a Drosophila PD model based on inactivation of DJ-1beta, the fly ortholog of the human DJ-1 gene involved in familial PD (fPD) as well as in idiopathic PD (iPD). The aim of this project is to discover compounds capable of stopping/delaying PD progression. To this end, we are using drugs from the Prestwick chemical library, which contains 1120 compounds, most of them approved by various health agencies and tested for bioavailability and human safety. Hence, our results will allow drug repurposing, a new trend in drug discovery by which new therapeutic applications for an existing drug are found, accelerating their potential use in PD patients.
- Ethnopharmacology, natural and nutraceutical products with activity in the treatment of metabolic syndrome: In this line we evaluate the biological effects of products of natural origin, trying to unravel the mechanisms underlying the observed effects. We aim to develop new therapeutic options for obesity and diabetes mellitus, as well as to clarify the scientific basis of the main ethnopharmacological uses of natural products.
- Quantitative study of cell lineage decisions in early mouse embryos: How a zygote develops from a single cell into a complex multicellular organism is a fundamental question in Developmental Biology. The first few days of mouse development before the embryo implants in the mother¿s uterus are devoted to the specification and differentiation of all the cell types required to support embryo growth, and the embryo itself. The first fate to be determined is the trophectoderm (TE), which contributes to the placenta. The second fate decision is to become Epiblast (Epi), which contributes to the embryo proper, or Primitive Endoderm (PrE), which mostly contributes to the extra-embryonic yolk sac. Mammalian preimplantation development is unique because the mammalian zygote contains no apparent polarity that may be linked to later developmental events. Our novel quantitative multidisciplinary approach allows us to investigate this stage of development in an unprecedented way, revealing unexpected new information about the three-dimensional cell distribution. The main model system used is the mouse preimplantation embryo as it is highly tolerant to various experimental perturbations, displaying a high level of plasticity and self-organization.
- Epidemiology, Genetics and Pathogenesis of Type 1-Epidemiology, Genetics and Pathogenesis of Type 1 Diabetes: The participation in the Type 1 Diabetes Genetics Consortium (T1DGC), a multicentric endeavour, funded by NIDDK and JDRF, allowed us to assess the genetic features of our own population with familial type 1 diabetes, and to study other features of type 1 diabetes, such as reduced fertility and associated autoimmune diseases.
- Research centered on the person with diabetes- Person-Centerred Research in Diabetes: As part this patient-centered research, a new tool has been developed, to assess health-related quality of life in people with type 1 diabetes: the ViDa1 questionnaire, which is available upon request. It has been validated in Italian. In addition, the effect on motivational interviewing, a mode of health professional-patient communication, on selfcare in diabetes, has been assessed. This was done by means of a randomised clinical trial
- Phenotypic characterization and translational use of animal models of diabetes and macrosomy: From a translational perspective, this line of research is based on two fundamental axes:
- Intrauterine programming in pre -estacional diabetes: Maternal diabetes may have an impact on the offspring, beyond genetic effects. Epigenetic markers might be detected at the time of birth. We have collected clinical information and placenta samples from mothers with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, partners of men with type 1 diabetes and controls. This will allow us to distinguish the effects of maternal hyperglycaemia and immune-mediated mechanisms from genetics. We are studying miRNAs, methylations and their consequences on gene expression.
- Clinical trials in diabetes and obesity-clinical trials in diabetes and obesity: The group has participated in international clinical trials of immunointervention in type 1 diabetes (AIDA, DiaAID2), but we also design and promote randomised clinical trials in type 1 and type 2 diabetes, as well as in obesity. The most recent RCT assesses the effect of motivational interviewing on self-care in type 1 diabetes
- Digital health and diabetes; Digital Health and Diabetes: The creation and implementation of a virtual platform with and for people with type 1 diabetes (EncoDiab-PI 10/02310), a project coordinated with the Arnau de Vilanova Hospital, Lleida (PI 10/00686, M Hernández and D Mauricio), was carried out with the patients themselves, whose needs were collected through focus groups. The experience gained in the design of EncoDiab (Alvarado, Patient Pref Adher 2015) served as the basis for the participation in the European IC-HEALTH project (www.ic-health.eu), aimed at improving digital health literacy in Europe, and will also be applied to WARIFA (Watching the risk factors: Artificial intelligence and the personalized prevention and management of chronic conditions), which started in Jan 2021.