Omega-1, a novel immunomodulator with potential to prevent Type 1 diabetes?

1型糖尿病是一种自身免疫性疾病，在英国发病率急剧上升。这种增加背后的原因尚不清楚，但有一种解释是感染因子暴露的减少可能是原因。我们以前用1型糖尿病小鼠模型证明，寄生虫提取物能够抑制这种小鼠品系的糖尿病发展。预防糖尿病不一定要有活感染。我们的研究进一步表明，预防是通过增加免疫反应的调节来实现的。我们有初步的数据表明，这种寄生虫的纯化产物能够诱导一群参与免疫调节的细胞。我们打算看看这个产品是否能抑制我们小鼠的糖尿病，它是否也能诱导人类调节细胞，并剖析单个分子是如何做到这一点的。这项工作的重要性在于，它可能会导致一种新的生物调节剂的发展，可用于预防人类糖尿病的发病。

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease which is increasing dramaticallyin incidence in the UK. The reasons behind this increase are unknown butone explanation is that a reduced exposure to infectious agents may beresponsible.We have previously shown using a mouse model of type 1diabetes that extracts of a parasite are able to inhibit development ofdiabetes in this mouse strain. It is not necessary to have a liveinfection to achieve diabetes prevention. Our studies furthermore showthat prevention is achieved by increasing regulation of the immuneresponse. We have preliminary data showing that a purified product of theparasite is able to induce a population of cells involved in immuneregulation. We propose to see whether this product can inhibit diabetes inour mice, whether it can also induce human regulatory cells and dissecthow a single molecule can do this. The importance of this work is that itmay lead to the development of a novel biomodulator that can be used toprevent diabetes onset in humans.