A new Montreal laboratory paves the way for a cure for type 1 diabetes

MONTREAL – The rapid acceleration of scientific knowledge in stem cell and regenerative medicine suggests that insulin dependence may one day be a thing of the past for patients with type 1 diabetes.

Yasaman Aghazadeh is one of the researchers leading the way in the quest for a cure for this autoimmune disease. Newly arrived at the Institut de recherche clinique de Montréal (IRCM), she will head the new Regenerative Medicine Research Unit for Diabetes.

“Diabetes is an epidemic, particularly in Canada. One in four Canadians is diabetic or pre-diabetic, which is not particularly positive,” she points out in an interview during a Canadian Press visit to her new laboratory.

With a PhD in experimental medicine from McGill University, she has been working for eight years on the regeneration of pancreatic tissue from stem cells. This research was undertaken at Toronto’s McEwen Stem Cell Institute.

While she aspired to run her own lab, Aghazadeh reveals that she targeted the IRCM because of the buzz around diabetes research in Montreal.

“The IRCM is a leader in diabetes and metabolism research. There are fantastic researchers and clinicians here who collaborate very well together,” she continues.

Since much of her work focuses on type 2 diabetes, she believes she can make a niche for herself by focusing on type 1.

When everything is working normally, it’s the beta cells inside the pancreas that produce the insulin the body needs to regulate blood sugar levels. In patients with type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks the beta cells, preventing them from fulfilling their role.

Currently, the effects of this disease are controlled by regular injections of insulin. However, this treatment proves burdensome over the long term, and people must adhere to it rigorously for the rest of their lives.

Another type of treatment has recently been developed in Edmonton. It involves transplanting islets of Langerhans, a group of cells that includes beta cells.

Although promising, this treatment is limited by a shortage of donors. Since type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, the patient must undergo immunosuppressive treatment before the transplant. This protocol carries a high risk of side-effects, and proves difficult for patients.

There’s another major problem: the survival of cells manufactured in the laboratory. As they have no vascular network, they cannot integrate the human organism.

It is precisely each of these challenges that Yasaman Aghazadeh and her team, initially comprising a research assistant and a doctoral student, hope to overcome.

Over the next few years, the researcher hopes to recreate complex pancreatic tissues, complete with vascular networks, and above all to demystify the entire cellular functioning of the pancreas.

“We want the composition of these tissues to be as identical as possible to that of human tissues”, she sums up from her premises, which are still waiting to be fitted out.

To achieve this, the researcher wants to start at the earliest stages of life and carefully observe the tissue development process.

“We don’t just want to recreate a pancreas, we want to understand each of its components,” insists the woman her colleagues call “Yassie”.

Tehran-Montreal-Toronto

After completing her bachelor’s degree at the University of Tehran, Iran, Aghazadeh joined the laboratory of Dr. Vassilios Papadopoulos in the Experimental Medicine Program at McGill University.

There, she obtained her Master’s and Doctorate degrees, working on hormone production and cell signalling pathways. She was particularly interested in hormones produced by the adrenal glands and testicles.

Through this research, her team succeeded in developing a treatment to stimulate hormone production. This patented discovery is now the subject of a drug under development in the United States.

At the same time, since the lab desperately needed human tissue to conduct its experiments, Yasaman Aghazadeh set up a cohort of students to manufacture human tissue from stem cells.

“I discovered that I was much more interested in stem cells than in drug development,” she confides. So I looked for laboratories that were working on this full-time.”

So “Yassie” moved to Toronto, where she joined the McEwan Institute. There she began her quest to produce pancreatic tissue from stem cells.

If she succeeds, Yasaman Aghazadeh could eventually see her work transformed into a clinical study and possibly change the lives of millions of people.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on June 11, 2023.