Michelle Kimple
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Pharmacology
Type 2 diabetes develops when beta cells in the pancreas can no longer release enough insulin to control blood sugar. It is increasingly common, and today's children face a lifetime risk of nearly 50%.
- Fields
Pharmacology
Physiology
Biochemistry
- Topics
type 2 diabetes
pancreatic beta cells
insulin secretion
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2028
What they work on
- Determine how the EP3 receptor affects separate cellular pools of calcium and cAMP in mouse and human beta cells, and how these changes alter insulin secretion and beta-cell mass, using cellular imaging.
- Quantify how the G protein Gαz drives movement and phosphorylation of Rap1GAP, a signaling protein, and how these changes affect beta-cell function and mass, using proteomics.
- Measure changes in the arachidonic acid metabolome of human pancreatic islets during progression to type 2 diabetes, and test how these changes affect beta-cell responses to glucose and GLP-1.
More about the research
Few diabetes drugs target beta cells directly, and those that do help only some patients. This project studies one signaling route that changes in failing beta cells. It asks how the route may first help beta cells cope with obesity and later contribute to their failure.
Why it matters
People with type 2 diabetes have few drugs that directly protect or restore insulin-producing beta cells. Defining how EP3 and Gαz signaling shifts from helpful to harmful could identify targets for increasing the number of working beta cells. It could also explain why GLP-1-based drugs work in some patients but not others, which may improve treatment of type 2 diabetes.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Bethany Cummings
University of California-Davis, CA·Physiology
Compare liver and islet responses to injected glucagon in obese mice and after dietary or bariatric-surgery weight loss, to test whether α-cell signaling shifts from the liver to insulin secretion.
Jonathan Campbell
Duke University, NC·Physiology
Test whether pericytes, cells lining blood vessels, are the main GIP receptor (GIPR)-expressing cells in fat tissue, using mouse models that mark and lineage-trace GIPR-positive cells over time.
Dongmin Liu
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Pharmacology
Characterize the anti-diabetic and anti-obesity effects of daily oral elenolic acid in diet-induced obese and db/db diabetic mice, using metabolic profiling and euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamps to measure insulin sensitivity.
The school
University of Wisconsin-Madison: 91 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 854 research doctorates a year.
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