News & Research

    University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia

Quantitative manganese-enhanced MRI of beta-cell mass

General Research Subject: Both Type 1 And Type 2 Diabetes

Focus: Other

Type of Grant: Basic Science

Project Start Date: January 1, 2010

Project End Date: December 31, 2012

Research Description

Pancreatic beta cells are fully responsible for producing insulin, which is critical for maintaining normal blood sugar. The loss of pancreatic beta cells is the key problem in type 1 diabetes, and the goal of many new treatments is to stabilize or improve the number of beta cells (beta cell mass). There is currently no way to directly measure the beta cell mass of a patient, which makes it difficult to assess disease progression and to assess the impact of new therapies. 

Thus, the estimation of beta cell mass by noninvasive imaging is a vital but unrealized goal. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using manganese as a contrast agent may be well-suited for noninvasively quantifying beta cell mass. Manganese will be investigated because it preferentially labels beta cells and modifies the MRI signal in a way that may reveal the beta cell mass. In this project, methods will be developed to acquire and analyze manganese-enhanced MRI images in a manner optimal for measuring beta cell mass. These new methods will then be evaluated in a mouse model of type 1 diabetes. If successful, these novel methods will improve our ability to noninvasively quantify beta cell mass during the progression of diabetes and to monitor the affects of new therapies.

Reseacher Profile

What area of diabetes research does your project cover? What role will this particular project play in preventing, treating and/or curing diabetes? 

This project develops a new medical imaging technology to noninvasively assess pancreatic beta mass. Pancreatic beta cells are fully responsible for producing insulin, which is critical for maintaining normal blood sugar. The loss of pancreatic beta cells is the key problem in type 1 diabetes, and the goal of many new investigational therapies is to stabilize or increase the number of beta cells (beta cell mass). However, there is currently no way to directly measure the beta cell mass of a patient, which makes it difficult to assess disease progression and to assess the impact of investigational therapies. 

Thus, the estimation of beta cell mass by noninvasive imaging is a vital but unrealized goal. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using manganese as a contrast agent may be well-suited for noninvasively quantifying beta cell mass. Manganese will be investigated because it preferentially labels beta cells and modifies the MRI signal in a way that may enable us to measure the beta cell mass. If successful, these novel methods will improve our ability to noninvasively quantify beta cell mass during the progression of diabetes and to monitor the affects of new therapies on beta cell mass.

If a person with diabetes were to ask you how your project will help them in the future, how would you respond? 

If successful, the development of a noninvasive imaging method for assessment of beta cell mass could have a major impact on diabetes research. Specifically, our method may be useful for evaluating whether investigational therapies aimed at increasing beta cell mass actually accomplish their aim. Because MRI is not harmful to patients or animals, these methods may be employed in preclinical studies of investigational therapies, or eventually, in clinical studies of investigational therapies.

Why is it important for you, personally, to become involved in diabetes research? What role will this award play in your research efforts? 

As a researcher in the field of biomedical imaging, my goal is to envision how imaging may be used in new ways to improve human health. There are clearly unexplored opportunities to develop new imaging technologies for the assessment of beta cell mass. We were previously funded for one year by a JDRF Innovative award that enabled us to begin this research project. This ADA award will allow us to continue to develop and evaluate our MRI methods for the next 3 years. 

In what direction do you see the future of diabetes research going? 

In the area of imaging beta cell mass, I believe that successful methods will be developed within the next 5 years. Furthermore, we may see successes in multiple imaging modalities, including MRI, SPECT, and PET. Upon the development and validation of these new imaging technologies, their adoption into preclinical and clinical research studies may be rapid. Nearly all studies aimed at assessing the efficacy of new investigational therapies will employ noninvasive beta cell imaging as an important endpoint.