Grant: Operating Grant - Priority Announcement: INMD Start Up Funds (bridge funding)

Type 1 Diabetes, an autoimmune disease caused by a patients immune cells killing the body's insulin producing Beta-cells, is a major health concern in Canada. Transplantation of donor islets can cure Type 1 diabetic patients; however, the transplanted cells often fail due to attack by the recipient's immune cells. Immune cells secret compounds called cytokines that induce Beta-cell death, or apoptosis. A great deal remains unknown about how apoptosis occurs within Beta-cells and how it is controlled. Understanding these processes is essential for developing novel strategies to cure Type 1 Diabetes. What is known is that exposure to immune cell produced cytokines changes the expression of many genes within Beta-cells; in fact this turns on the expression of several genes involved in apoptosis. How these genes are turned on, and how they are normally kept off, are not understood. Transcription factors are proteins that control gene expression, and we have identified a transcription factor called Myt3 that is almost exclusively expressed in islet cell types and whose expression is significantly reduced by Beta-cell exposure to cytokines. We believe that Myt3 normally prevents the expression of genes that induce apoptosis. By manipulating it's expression we hypothesize we will reduce Beta-cell apoptosis in response to cytokine exposure. We believe that this will bring us one step closer to a cure for Type 1 Diabetes.