Insulin-Free Diabetes Treatment Found

An international research team, headed by a Korean scientist, has discovered a way to treat diabetes without using insulin.

Professor Koo Seung-hoi (age 37) of the Molecular Therapy Research Center at College of Medicine in Sungkyunkwan University, announced on Tuesday that the team examined a protein, called PTP-MEG2, that regulates blood sugar levels through experiments using mice.

The experiment was performed jointly with American institutes including the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and the Scripps Research Institute, and was introduced in the international science journal “Cell Metabolism” on its online website on Tuesday.

The team found that increasing the level of PTP-MEG2 in the liver of a mouse with diabetes increased its blood sugar level.

The increase in PTP-MEG2 interferes with the function of insulin in the liver and increases the blood sugar level.

Professor Koo said, “This is the first time that PTP-MEG2 has been observed to interfere with insulin’s function of lowering the blood sugar level. If we develop a drug that restrains PTP-MEG2, we will be able to treat diabetes without injecting insulin into a patient.”

sohyung@donga.com