Professor Neville Vassallo, who heads a research team at the Department of Physiology and Biochemistry, has been awarded a grant by the Research Excellence Programme of the Malta Council of Science & Technology (DIAMYLOID), to explore the molecular underpinnings of a metabolic disease which is highly prevalent in Malta – namely, type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).
One interesting aspect of T2DM, explained Prof. Vassallo, is that during the course of the disease, the pancreas (the organ which makes and releases insulin) is gradually destroyed by enlarging deposits of a substance called “amyloid”. The amyloid is made up of clumps of a protein produced by the pancreas, known as the “islet amyloid polypeptide”, or IAPP. This clumping, or aggregation, process is actually very similar to what we see happening in Alzheimer’s disease, when plaques of the amyloid-beta peptide are formed and cause brain degeneration.
“If we consider diabetes as primarily an amyloid disorder, then it makes sense to try and develop new strategies to treat diabetic patients which are aimed at either preventing the aggregation of the IAPP peptide, or rendering the amyloid clumps less harmful”, Prof. Vassallo said. Indeed, an important part of the research involves a collaboration with the Max Planck Institute of Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany, on a set of small-molecule chemical compounds, with the aim of identifying those compounds that are most able to interfere with the clumping process of the IAPP peptide.
The project will also look at whether amyloid clumps can cause mitochondrial dysfunction – mitochondria are critical for the process of insulin release by the pancreatic cells. Ultimately, concludes Prof. Vassallo, “only through such basic research and an in-depth understanding of the disease process will we be able to offer new drugs for the treatment of T2DM, and other amyloid diseases.”