Gottschalk Medical Plaza
1 Medical Plaza Dr,Irvine, CA 92617
UCI Health Diabetes Center attracts scientists, physicians, patients and volunteers from around the globe. Our work is focused on research to prevent diabetes, improve treatments and, most importantly, find a cure.
The UCI Health Diabetes Center is the only academic diabetes research institute in Orange County. The research environment and infrastructure on the UCI campus provide scientists at the UCI Health Diabetes Center with unique opportunities to use multidisciplinary approaches to study diabetes.
It is well established that genetic predisposition plays a major role in the development of diabetes. According to genetic-epidemiological studies, an individual with one parent who has diabetes has a 40% lifetime risk of developing the disease. The risk increases to 70% when both parents are diabetic. To decode the genetic risk genes for diabetes, an interdisciplinary team of scientists led by Dr. Qin Yang (Endocrinology) and Dr. Wei Li (Bioinformatics) at the UCI Health Diabetes Center screened 1.5 million genetic variants in over 1 million people. We identified several genes that may weaken insulin production from the pancreas, which could explain the genetic risks for diabetes. Currently, the team is investigating why specific genetic variants weaken insulin production, with the goal of finding ways to correct the defect to prevent and treat diabetes.
Aging is another major risk factor for diabetes, with an estimated 25% of adults aged 65 years or older having diabetes in the US, and more than 50% meeting the criteria for prediabetes. Insulin resistance, which refers to the failure of insulin to lower sugars, plays a major role in age-related diabetes. However, the mechanisms for insulin resistance during aging are not yet fully understood. Dr. Qin Yang (Endocrinology), Dr. Bogi Andersen (Endocrinology), and Dr. Qing Nie (Mathematics) at the UCI Health Diabetes Center are using very sophisticated single-cell sequencing technologies to study the mechanisms for aging-associated insulin resistance. Dr. Nie's group is the first in the world to develop a novel computational method for studying molecular interactions. The team is currently analyzing sequencing data from thousands of cells, with each cell containing thousands of gene signatures. The goal is to identify molecular signatures in metabolic organs, which may serve as therapeutic targets for treating aging-related insulin resistance. Insulin resistance affects both Type-1 and Type-2 diabetics.
