Project summary
People with diabetes are at risk of many complications because high blood sugar levels can damage their tiny blood vessels. Even though every person develops complications differently, there are no personalised treatments. Dr Zampetaki will test a new technology, which makes copies of a person’s blood vessels in the lab, to see which drugs best prevent blood vessel damage for them. This could help to personalise care to each individual with diabetes and accelerate the development of new complications treatments.
Background to research
High blood sugar levels over time can damage tiny blood vessels in people living with diabetes. This can lead to complications like kidney damage, sight loss, and nerve damage in the hands and feet. Having one complication also makes it more likely that another will develop.
But every person with diabetes is different. To improve care, we need to understand how complications develop in each individual, and which treatments will best protect them specifically from damage.
Thanks to advances in lab technology, we can now grow 3D mini versions of people’s tissues that can better mimic what’s going on inside the human body. This offers a more accurate and personalised way to study diabetes and test new drugs that treat damage to blood vessels, while avoiding the need for early animal testing.
Research aims
Dr Anna Zampetaki and team will use a new technology, which involves using a person’s own stem cells, to grow mini versions of their blood vessels, called organoids. They’ll use these organoids to better understand how diabetes-related damage to tiny blood vessels develops over time and to test how effective different drugs are at preventing damage.
The research team will:
- create organoids from stem cells of both people with diabetes and those without, to compare how diabetes affects blood vessels;
- check if the same changes found in the organoids also appear in real blood vessel samples taken from people with diabetes;
- test a wide range of existing complications drugs on the organoids, to find out which are most helpful for preventing blood vessel damage.
Potential benefit to people with diabetes
Organoid 3D technology could transform how diabetes complications are understood, prevented, and treated. The technology opens the door to testing drugs on copies of people's blood vessels in the lab. This could lead to safer and more personalised diabetes complications treatments that more accurately reflect how the drugs would work inside each person’s body. And increasing our understanding of the early warning signs of diabetes damage in people’s blood vessels could mean people can receive treatments sooner.
