Grant: CIHR Fellowship

There is recent experimental evidence to indicate that the hormone leptin may improve the control of blood sugar levels in patients with type 1 diabetes. The Kieffer laboratory and others have found that leptin injections rapidly lower blood sugar and increase the action of insulin in the body. As a result of these observations, clinical trials with leptin are now underway in patients with type 1 diabetes. My goal is to discover how leptin works in the body, as this could lead to better treatments. Some studies have shown that leptin can act on the brain to lower blood sugar, but we believe leptin also acts on non-brain tissues to improve diabetes. Therefore, I will assess the ability of leptin to decrease blood sugar in mouse models of diabetes where leptin action is selectively prevented or permitted in the brain, or in tissues other than the brain. Based upon existing literature and evidence from the Kieffer laboratory, I will particularly focus my efforts on determining the role of leptin action in immune cells. Collectively, these studies will hopefully contribute to discovering the mechanisms by which leptin regulates blood sugar levels and further evaluate the therapeutic potential for leptin in treating type 1 diabetes.