We plan to quantify redoxin expression levels and the frequency and type of redoxin expressing pancreatic cells by imaging procedures established in our group. For this purpose we propose a pilot study with samples from #3 cases ideally with rapid (pre-type 1 or type 1 diabetes) or more chronic (type 2 diabetes) ongoing beta cell destruction process. To these samples we will apply well-established antibodies that were tested in our cell based models and non-diabetic human pancreas before. Thereby we will be able to identify the most obvious changes of expression of redoxins of interest with a focus on iron-sulphur containing clusters, such as glutaredoxins for the first time in human pathology. We will generate hypotheses from the collected results to perform power calculations and figure out if and how many samples are required for confirmation. Moreover, we will search for prominent associations of our findings to the medical history of the subjects, specifically to insulin reserve measured by C-peptide blood or urine concentrations whatever available.
At our place of research Giessen, Germany a human islet transplantation program was performed for over 20 years, but it was halted due to changes of national transplantation laws with the result of reduced availability of pancreas organ donors. From this period we have continuously collected and restored pancreas samples both embedded in paraffin and frozen from non-diabetic donors.