Website: http://www.montreal-diabetes-research-center.org/en/poitout/poitout.asp

Coming to Canada from

University of Washington, United States

Research involves

Understanding the normal function of the pancreatic beta-cell and its perturbations in diabetes.

Research relevance

Identifying new targets for improving the treatment of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.

Understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms of beta-cell dysfunction

Diabetes is caused in part by insufficient insulin secretion, which results in a chronic elevation of blood glucose levels. The goal of Dr. Vincent Poitout as chairholder is to better understand beta-cell dysfunction in diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes is characterized by a total lack of endogenous insulin production. Islet transplantation is a therapy that could cure the disease, but its effectiveness is limited by the absence of predictive criteria of islet function. Dr. Poitout and his team are working with experts in proteomics and metabolomics on using this very powerful new technique to more accurately characterize preparations of human islets that have been isolated prior to transplantation.

Type 2 diabetes is a polygenic syndrome that is due in part to defective insulin secretion. The purpose of Dr. Poitout's research is to gain a better understanding of the normal biology of the beta cell of the pancreas and identify the functional defects that are present in diabetes. His research aims to identify the mechanisms through which fatty acids stimulate the secretion of insulin under physiological conditions but inhibit beta cell function under pathological conditions.

The long-term goal of the program is to identify new therapeutic strategies to replace insulin-secreting cells in type 1 diabetes and improve beta cell function in type 2 diabetes. These two diseases affect over two million Canadians.