Cells found in male testes may be the key to aiding Type 1 diabetes patients.
A local researcher is looking in to how effective Sertoli cells can be in helping preserve insulin-producing cells in the human body.
Jannette Dufour, associate professor in the department of cell biology and biochemistry in the School of Medicine at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center, said her research is focused on Sertoli cells and their effects on islet cells — insulin-producing cells found in the pancreas.
Dufour’s lab is trying to find a way to transplant Sertoli cells into patients with Type 1 diabetes, she said.
“The reason we are studying Sertoli cells is the protection is not always 100 percent,” said Gurvinder Kaur, postdoctoral research fellow at TTUHSC in Dufour’s lab. “What we are trying to do is boost their protection. ... We know the exact mechanism, how they work.”
“This cell is found in testes of males,” Dufour said. “It’s considered a mother cell because its job is to protect these developing germ cells.”
The cell was discovered by an Italian researcher named Enrico Sertoli in 1865, Dufour said.
“Ironically, when he discovered the cells, he described them as motherly cells because … they surround all these germ cells and he speculated that they’re a motherly cell that’s (protective),” she said.
Dufour is trying to find a way to transfer and manipulate Sertoli cells in Type 1 diabetes patients to help them protect islet cells, which make up 2 to 5 percent of the pancreas.
“Those are the cells that make insulin,” Dufour said. “So when someone loses those cells and they don’t make any more insulin, and insulin is what’s needed to regulate blood glucose levels, so without insulin, the blood glucose levels increase and you have diabetes.”
There are two types of diabetes — Type 1 and Type 2.
Approximately 8.3 percent of the United States population has diabetes, according to 2011 statistics listed on the American Diabetes Association website.
“Type 1 is an autoimmune disease where the immune system actually attacks the cells that make insulin,” she said. “So normally, the immune system is what protects you so when you have a cold or something like that, cells in the immune system will attack the virus or the cold and basically help make you better. In this case, for reasons we don’t know, the immune system attacks these beta cells which are in the pancreas.”
Type 2 diabetes is different, Dufour said.
“There instead is more of a metabolism problem where you start out usually making a lot of insulin, but it doesn’t work right,” Dufour said. “… People with Type 2, if they get stressed enough, the cells can die. Then they also don’t make insulin or they don’t make enough. Then they can also need insulin as a treatment. … So my lab is primarily focused on Type 1.”
Dufour said her team is also working on starting another project focused on Type 2 diabetes.
“We want to allow transplantation of these islets that make insulin,” she said. “So we have a major focus on understanding how these Sertoli cells are modifying the immune response so we can improve their protection.
“The second major interest in our lab is we’re also trying to engineer Sertoli cells, themselves, to make insulin so that we don’t have to worry about protecting another cell. We can just transplant the Sertoli cells. So we have some pretty exciting data getting them to make insulin. … We’re trying to take advantage of the fact that our cells have a way to modify the immune response and then use that to improve the treatment of diabetes.”
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