Endocrine Abstracts

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is one of the foremost health challenges presently facing developed society, affecting almost 10% of the UK adult population. This disease state can be best described as a failure of the insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cell mass to compensate for peripheral resistance. The resulting increases in blood glucose concentration lead to a range of co-morbidities including renal and heart disease, as well as blindness and nerve problems. Mounting evidence suggests that, by focusing on individual isolated beta cells, we may be missing key elements in the tissue-level regulation of insulin release, as well as how this is impaired during T2DM. By harnessing the spatiotemporal precision of light to finely control electrical activity, optogenetics and photopharmacology have opened up the possibility to study the behaviour of beta cells directly within the islet context. This presentation will describe how these techniques are being combined with in situ imaging approaches to investigate the role of beta cell-beta cell communication in insulin secretion, thus re-defining our view of the mechanisms underlying T2DM.