(From left) Mete Civelek, PhD, Suna Ӧnengüt-Gümüşcü, PhD, and Clint Miller, PhD
Associate Professors Mete Civelek, PhD, Suna Ӧnengüt-Gümüşcü, PhD, and Clint Miller, PhD, from the Department of Genome Sciences, were awarded a $2.9 million dollar multi-PI U01 grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to study molecular drivers of atherosclerosis in diabetes using human tissues from the Cardiovascular Biorepository for Type 1 Diabetes Program (CaRe-T1D).
The mortality rate among individuals with type 1 diabetes (T1D) remains significantly elevated due to cardiovascular complications. Unlike type 2 diabetes (T2D), T1D presents a unique trajectory of cardiovascular disease (CVD) progression, with persistently elevated risk factors that are not fully explained by conventional cardiovascular risk assessments. Evidence suggests that T1D’s autoimmune nature may contribute to CVD through inflammatory pathways.
Drs. Civelek, Ӧnengüt-Gümüşcü, and Miller will build upon their existing collaborations to determine the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the increased CVD risk in TiD compared to T2D and non-diabetic individuals. They will delineate the differential immune profiles in T1D, T2D, and non-diabetic individuals by serum proteomics and single-cell immune profiling. The researchers will also identify the cellular and molecular differences in atherosclerotic plaques using single-cell multiome approaches across these groups, focusing on variations in plaque composition, cell-cell communication, and regulatory networks. The team will correlate their cellular results with deep-learning-based segmentation of histology whole-slide images available in the CaRe-T1D cohort. The expected outcome is to provide insights into the immune-mediated mechanisms of CVD in T1D, leading to the identification of novel molecular targets for therapeutic intervention.
Sander van der Laan, PhD, from the University Medical Center Utrecht is a collaborator on this project.
Filed Under: Research