Scientists have developed a new treatment for type 2 diabetes

Restoring insulin's function is a key to treating type 2 diabetes, and in a recent study published in the international journal Nature Metabolism, scientists from the University of Toulouse developed a new treatment strategy that uses a special enzyme called hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL), which may have beneficial effects on insulin activity when stimulating fat synthesis in fat cells.
Diabetes is a chronically high level of blood sugar (hyperglycemia) and progresses in people with type 2 diabetes due to disruption of glucose metabolism;
Hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL) is a special enzyme that converts fat into fatty acids and releases them into the bloodstream; in obese patients, when type 2 diabetes begins, these fatty acids induce the body to gradually become resistant to insulin, and previous studies have shown that reduced expression of hormone-sensitive lipases in fat cells promotes the body's good response to insulin, which may be an indicator of the health of these cells. The researchers observed that the beneficial effects of HSL reduction may not actually be due to lower levels of fatty acid release, or may be associated with increased levels of lysic acid synthesis, the main fatty acid in olive oil, and that initial research may help researchers develop new treatments to treat obese patients with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes.
In order to develop a new strategy, researchers must also clarify how reducing HSL levels can have beneficial effects on insulin activity; researchers have found that the presence of physical interactions between HSL and a special transcription factor (ChREBP) may be responsible for the synthesis of fatty acids, which block the activity of HSL when it binds to CHREBP, and that a decrease in HSL levels leads to the release of the factor in the nuclei, which promotes increased activity, phylic acid and insulin sensitivity.
Preliminary findings suggest that known HSL inhibitors can block the interaction between HSL and ChREBP, and that the data could help researchers develop new molecules that target the interaction between the two, and researchers are working with AstraZenecon scientists to see if a variety of different methods can effectively block the interaction between HSL and ChREBP molecules.original source:
Pauline Morigny, Marianne Houssier, Aline Mairal, et al. Interaction between hormone-sensitive lipase and ChREBP in fat cells controls insulin sensitivity, Nature Metabolism （2018）. DOI: 10.1038/s42255-018-0007-6 (Bio Valley)