Research reveals the cell culprit that causes type 1 diabetes!

For immunologists, autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes are the opposite of cancer

Why does the immune system behave so differently in these two situations? No one knows

This seems a bit out of reach

Now, four years later, the results of the research have come out

Building a diabetes model in mice

Type 1 diabetes is caused by the body starting to produce T cells that specifically recognize and kill the insulin-secreting beta cells in the pancreas

To explore what makes type 1 diabetes unique, the authors turned to a mouse model of type 1 diabetes that closely mirrors the conditions of patients with the disease

Like all immune cells, CD8 T cells travel in the body through lymphatic vessels.

By closely studying the journey of these T cells, these authors were able to see that the T cells in the lymph nodes have some unique characteristics compared to those that eventually enter the pancreas

For scientists, this suggests that the T cells in the lymph nodes act as stem cells (stem cell-like T cells) to continuously regenerate the autoreactive T cells in the pancreas

Only a few cells are necessary for disease

This is what seems to be happening

T cell, image from CC0 Public Domain

In contrast, transferring hundreds of thousands of pancreatic T cells to a new mouse did not cause diabetes

Next, they asked what would happen if T cells were unable to migrate into the pancreas

This population of stem cell-like T cells has never been found to be associated with type 1 diabetes before, and Dr.

Note: The original text has been deleted

Reference materials:

Tanmoy Saha et al.