New compound approach offers new treatment promise in type 1 diabetes

Russian scientists have modelled type 1 diabetes in an experiment to understand recovery processes in the pancreas, in a bid to develop new treatment approaches.
Researchers tested a number of compounds on rat models of type 1 diabetes to examine whether they could activate regeneration processes in cells damaged by diabetes. The rats were given alloxan which destroys the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas.
Using derivatives of a compound known as 1,3,4-thiadiazine, researchers were able to lower glucose levels and HbA1c of the rats, and insulin levels increased, indicating heightened beta cell activity.
“The compounds that block the aforementioned pathogenetic mechanism may potentially be turned into medicinal drugs for the treatment of this socially significant disease,” said lead author Irina Danilova, head of the morphology and biochemistry lab at the Ural Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Danilova and colleagues investigated this new approach to help eliminate metabolic stress and inflammation associated with diabetes.
Because high blood sugar levels can activate oxidative stress, which damages protein and fat cells and DNA molecules, preventing this process could reduce diabetes-associated damage.
“We decided to create new approaches to prevention and treatment of diabetes by using synthesized anti-diabetic chemical compounds. It was important for us to understand the mode of their action on cell, tissue, orga, and body levels,” added Danilova.
The derivative substances of the 1,3,4-thiadiazine compound all had anti-oxidising and blood glucose-lowering properties, and were shown to lower hyperglycemia and improve insulin concentration in the rats.
The study team believed the findings mark an important discovery, and “could be one of the important events leading to the partial recovery from the beta cell disruption”.
The results have been published in the Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy journal.