LSU researcher receives diabetes study grant
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An LSU researcher recently received a $1.6 million grant to continue research into the connection between Type 2 diabetes and fat cell metabolism.
Jackie Stephens, LSU associate chairwoman of biological sciences, is using the renewal of the National Institutes of Health grant to determine different ways diabetes is caused.
“There are literally hundreds of different reasons — many still unknown — that people develop the disease,” Stephens said in a prepared released.
Her research group has already discovered several different ways that Type 2 diabetes can develop by changing metabolism in fat cells.
“There’s an exceptionally strong connection between obesity and Type 2 diabetes,” she said. “Most obese people do not have Type 2 diabetes; however, most Type 2 diabetic patients are obese. It’s a perplexing research situation that we and other researchers around the globe continue to study.”
Stephens and her research team have a different approach from most other diabetes research groups because they study the pathogenesis at the molecular level and focus on the STAT 5 protein.
These proteins can act as “master regulator” within cells because they control the production and expression of other proteins.
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