From the laboratories of the University of Pisa comes a groundbreaking study to help prevent metabolic diseases: through interdisciplinary research conducted by Arti Ahluwalia, Professor of Bioengineering, and her group of the Interdepartmental Research Center "E. Piaggio ", the first in-vitro model of diabetes has been developed. "In our experiment we have reproduced some of the features of human metabolic disorders in vitro, simulating the stress that organs are subjected to as a consequence of diabetes," says Arti Ahluwalia, lecturer of Biomedical Engineering, University of Pisa. "The system responds in a manner similar to the human body, showing the same signs of damage that occur at the systemic level and in vascular tissue in the presence of the disease."
The findings, published in the journal PLoS ONE, are of great importance not only for the study of metabolic diseases (including obesity), but also for their potential applications to the study of other diseases and the realization of new models of pathophysiology. This opens up a whole range of possible investigations on integrative physiology which have previously been thought impossible in-vitro. The research involves the use of the innovative cell culture system Quasi-Vivo ®, which has since been licensed to Kirkstall Ltd. All experiments were conducted by Dr. Bruna Vinci during her PhD and post doc, diving her time between the laboratories of Pisa and the University of Padua.
In the study described, 3 cell types relevant to energetic substrate metabolism (hepatocytes, adipose tissue and endothelial cells) have been cultured together in a 3-way culture system, connected by the flow of a common medium and exposed to media which simulate physiologically and pathologically relevant conditions such as the post feeding resting state and hyperglycemia. The results are startling because they demonstrate that a culture of multiple tissues connected according to rational schemes and allometric scaling can recapitulate some of the features of human metabolism such as systemic inflammation and vascular damage in the presence of nutritional overload
Metabolic diseases are often related to an excess of adipose tissue. These diseases are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Italy, and in progressive increase. Diabetes, like other metabolic diseases, is multifactorial, being inflammatory as well as genetic and epigenetic in nature. Metabolic disorders have a negative influence on the quality and duration of life and create severe cardiovascular complications. Where the prevention of metabolic diseases is insufficient , a growing commitment to improving its treatment from the perspective of more targeted and personalized medicine.
Scientific efforts are turning to in vitro models to study increasingly complex and more physiologically relevant scenarios , using new technologies to integrate different stimuli and cell types. These efforts make it possible to identify the interactions between various tissues and the specific role of each organ in maintaining metabolic homeostasis. They also serve to reduce the use of animal models for testing drugs and as models of human disease, which are known to be unreliable when extrapolated to humans.