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Researched Therapy Option - With Blue Light Against Diabetes
People with diabetes depend on a precise adjustment of their blood sugar levels, to avoid consequential damage of the disease as possible. To regulate the insulin balance, scientists at the Ludwig Maximillians University (LMU) Munich have now developed a type of optical switch that causes increased insulin secretion when the blue light is supplied.
According to the LMU, the researchers equipped a receptor important for the insulin household with the optical switch, which is activated by blue light and increases insulin secretion. The scientists led by Dirk Trauner, Professor of Chemical Biology and Genetics at the LMU, in cooperation with researchers led by David Hodson of Imperial College London, have "controlled a molecule with light that can optically regulate GLP-1R and increase insulin secretion ", Says the LMU. Their results were published in the journal "Angewandte Chemie".
In the future, insulin secretion could possibly be controlled by light. (Image: Syda Productions / fotolia.com) Regulation of insulin secretion
The common disease diabetes type 2 affects millions of people worldwide and the treatment options are limited so far on a control of blood sugar levels. Healing is not possible. As a result of the chronic metabolic disease shows an elevated blood sugar levels, "because the body cells no longer adequately pour or react to insulin," explain the researchers at LMU. In the regulation of insulin secretion in the body, the receptor GLP-1R plays a crucial role and this could also be of importance for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. The scientists therefore equipped the receptor in their experiments with a molecule that acts as an optical switch. "As a docking point for our new molecular switch, we use a so-called allosteric center of the GLP-1R," explains Johannes Broichhagen, first author of the study.
Molecular switch developed
According to the researchers, the allosteric center is to be understood as a specific region of GLP-1R, to which regulatory molecules bind, thereby causing a structural change in the receptor. The allosteric regulation can significantly increase the drug specificity of receptors such as GLP-R1. "So far, however, the drug development has been complicated by the fact that allosteric binding sites are not precisely controllable," explains Prof. Dirk Trauner. Here, however, a decisive step forward has been made by providing a synthetic binding partner of the allosteric center with a molecular switch that reacts to light.
Control of insulin secretion by light
The new molecule "PhotoETP" allows, according to the researchers, a precise optical control of the receptor GLP-1R. The new photo switch, in its inactive form, binds to the allosteric center of GLP-1R and is activated when illuminated with blue light. This leads to a structural change of the receptor, which activates this and initiates an increased insulin secretion. Because light can be controlled very precisely, the process is easy to control, reports Broichhagen. In the next step, the researchers are now planning to develop a variant of their switch that reacts to red light, which, in contrast to blue light, also reaches deeper tissue layers. Furthermore, the synthesis of additional, structurally similar molecules is envisaged. "GLP-1R belongs to the large class of G protein-coupled receptors, many of which are pharmaceutical target receptors," emphasizes Prof. Trauner. Therefore, the molecule "PhotoETP" is a promising template for the development of other potentially therapeutically useful photoswitchable molecules for receptors of this class. (Fp)