Project leaders: Dr. Sarah Tonack, Dr. David Romanin, Dr. Remy Bonnavion, Dr. Carola Meyer

Positive and negative modulation of glucose-stimulated insulin secretion through 20-HETE/FFA1 and acetate/FFA2/FFA3.

Metabolic disorders, such as obesity and type-2 diabetes, are risk factors for various diseases including cancer and cardiovascular disorders, and the number of obese and diabetic patients is dramatically increasing worldwide. In the past, we have identified new regulatory mechanisms of adipocyte turnover and adipocyte function through autocrine regulatory loops (Ahmed et al., 2010) and by inflammatory signaling pathways which regulate adipocyte survival and browning (Sassmann et al., 2016). We have also identified positive and negative modulators of glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (Tang et al., 2015; Tunaru et al., in revision).

Future work will focus on the regulation of adipocyte and β-cell turnover and function in healthy and disease states as well as on understanding how metabolic disorders such as obesity promote cancer progression and cardiovascular disorders.

Literature

Tunaru S, Bonnavion R, Brandenburger I, Thomas D, Scholich K, Offermanns S. (2017) 20-HETE promotes glucose-stimulated insulin secretion in an autocrine manner through FFAR1 (GPR40). Nat. Commun. [in press]

Sassmann-Schweda A, Singh P, Tang C, Wietelmann A, Wettschureck N, Offermanns S (2016) Increased apoptosis and browning of TAK1-deficient adipocytes protects against obesity. JCI Insight 1: e81175

Tang C, Ahmed K, Gille A, Lu S, Gröne HJ, Tunaru S, Offermanns S (2015). Loss of FFA2 and FFA3 increases insulin secretion and improves glucose tolerance in type 2 diabetes. Nat. Med. 21: 173-177

Ahmed, K., Tunaru, S., Tang, C., Müller, M., Gille, A., Sassmann, A., Hanson, J., and Offermanns, S. (2010) An autocrine lactate loop mediates insulin-dependent inhibition of lipolysis through GPR81. Cell Metab. 11: 311-319