People with type 2 diabetes have an increased risk of developing atherosclerosis, which may lead to common cardiovascular complications such as myocardial infarction and stroke. A common cause of these complications is the rupture of atherosclerotic plaques. LUDC researcher Jiangming Sun has been awarded 47,500 euro by the Hjelt Diabetes Foundation for a research project that aims to identify dangerous plaques at an early stage. He uses artificial intelligence to develop personalised vulnerability scores that can identify individuals at high risk of developing vulnerable plaques. The research is carried out on plaques from patients with or without type 2 diabetes, and thus the findings can benefit several patient groups.
“In many cases, dangerous plaques in the arteries are detected after they have already ruptured, which may lead to serious complications. Early identification of dangerous plaques in people with type 2 diabetes could be very advantageous as it might mean that we could develop new therapies and prevention strategies to reduce cardiovascular complications. The generous support from the Hjelt Diabetes Foundation will allow me to investigate this very important research question”, says Jiangming Sun, researcher in bioinformatics at LUDC.
Studies of disease pathways
The second grant recipient Emma Ahlqvist is a researcher in genomics, diabetes, and endocrinology at LUDC. Her latest research project builds on previous research on subgroups of diabetes. In a study published in 2018, Emma Ahlqvist and her colleagues showed that it is possible to divide type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes into five subgroups, based on disease progression and the risk of complications. A more recent study by the same researchers from 2021 showed that there are also distinct genetic differences between the four subgroups pertaining to type 2 diabetes. For her new project, Emma Ahlqvist will study biological processes in patients with diabetes to better characterise the new subtypes. The measurement of proteins, fat, and metabolites in the blood may give the researchers new information about the disease pathways.
“We hope that our studies of the biological processes will help us gain a better understanding of the subgroups of diabetes, and we believe that our investigation will be a valuable complement to our genetic studies of the subgroups. We need to learn more about the disease pathways of type 2 diabetes to develop individualised treatments”, says Emma Ahlqvist.
Epigenetic editing
The third project to receive funding by the foundation is led by Sabrina Ruhrmann, postdoctoral fellow in diabetes and epigenetics at LUDC. The causes of type 2 diabetes are not entirely mapped out, and epigenetics is contributing with new insights. Epigenetic changes occur when environmental or behavioral factors cause functional changes to the genome. Sabrina Ruhrmann and her colleagues will now investigate whether there are epigenetic modifications that are responsible for causing type 2 diabetes and, if so, they can be targeted for treatment of the disease through epigenetic editing.
“The grant from the Hjelt Diabetes Foundation means a lot, since it allows us to do more experiments that will help us understand the role of epigenetics in type 2 diabetes. The positive thing about epigenetic changes is that they are reversible. In the future, we hope to be able to correct unfavorable causal epigenetic changes in individuals with type 2 diabetes”, says Sabrina Ruhrmann.
