Islet Biology Group

The Islet Biology Group's aim is to understand the biology of the pancreatic beta-cell in health and how this becomes dysregulated in diabetes.

The group is built on strong teamwork and collaboration and aims to make a difference in the lives of people living with, or who are at risk of, diabetes. It seeks to understand how the beta cell responds to the physiological and pathophysiological cues in its immediate environment such that therapeutic interventions can be designed to maintain beta cell health and viability.

Islet Biology is composed of people from a diversity of backgrounds across the life sciences. These include cell biologists, pharmacologists, virologists, physiologists and immunologists as well as those with data science skills. The group works extensively with clinicians in the wider Exeter diabetes team and are always eager to ensure that our research plans are of relevance to the community of people living with diabetes.

One of its most important resources is a collection of pancreas samples (known as the Exeter Archival Diabetes Biobank) which were recovered from people very soon after the diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. Many of the organs come from young children and they represent the world’s largest collection of recent-onset type 1 diabetes pancreata. As such, this biobank provides the group with a unique opportunity to investigate the immunopathology of type 1 diabetes and, when coupled with our state-of-the-art imaging and analysis facilities, allows it to gain new insights into the progress of disease.

The group also makes extensive use of tissue culture to maintain human and rodent beta-cell lines as well as having access to rodent and, most recently, zebrafish models in which to study beta-cell pathobiology. It exploits the latest molecular and cell biological approaches to address important questions arising from study of these organisms.