WEBINAR SERIES—APS-Miltenyi Biotec: Remodeling of Pancreatic Innervation in Diabetes

June 10, 2021
11 a.m. EDT

The pancreas is densely innervated. Neural signals play a significant role in glucose regulation by modulating pancreatic hormone release. However, relatively little is known about the anatomical relationships between islets and nerves across the whole pancreas. In this webinar, Sarah Stanley, MB BChir, PhD, and Alexandra Alvarsson, PhD, both from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, will discuss their research using tissue clearing and whole-organ imaging of the pancreas to identify the 3D structure of pancreatic nerves and islets.

Stanley and Alvarsson will provide an overview of their methodology, which provides detailed information and quantification of pancreatic innervation in the healthy pancreas, in canonical models of diabetes and in samples from nondiabetic and diabetic donors. They will also present their findings that demonstrate greatly enriched innervation in the islets with regional variations. Stanley and Alvarsson will discuss beta cell innervation in mouse models of diabetes and in pancreata from human donors with type 2 diabetes.

Topics discussed will include:

• tissue clearing and 3D imaging to allow the mapping of nerves in peripheral organs,
• innervation of peripheral organs such as the pancreas, and
• how the pancreatic nerve is remodeled in diabetes.

Speakers:

Sarah A. Stanley, MB BChir, PhD, is an assistant professor of neuroscience and in the Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. Her research focuses on developing and optimizing tools to image and modulate neural circuits and applying these tools to understand neural control of metabolism.

Alexandra Alvarsson, PhD, is a senior scientist in Sarah Stanley’s lab at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. She is interested in the link between metabolism, endocrinology and the brain, particularly gaining a deeper understanding of how these entities interact in health and disease. Alvarsson’s current research entails mapping the circuitry, identifying markers and assessing the roles of glucose-sensing neurons of the central nervous system. These neurons are implicated in pathological conditions characterized by altered glucose sensitivity, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, obesity and insulin-induced hypoglycemia. The long-term goal of this research is through the use of viral tools, neuroimaging techniques, optical tissue clearing, behavioral assays, magneto- and chemogenetics, to identify alternative therapeutic interventions for metabolic disorders by targeting the central nervous system.