Graeme I. Bell Bio
Graeme I. Bell, PhD
Director, Diabetes Research and Training Center (DRTC)
Louis Block Professor of Medicine
The overall goal of Dr. Bell’s research program is to identify the genes that cause diabetes directly or that increase susceptibility to diabetes.
He is studying both monogenic and polygenic forms of diabetes. He and his colleagues have shown that maturity-onset diabetes of the young, a monogenic form of diabetes characterized by autosomal dominant inheritance, onset usually before 25 years of age and often in childhood or adolescence, and a primary defect in pancreatic beta cell function can result from mutations in the glycolytic enzyme glucokinase and the transcription factors hepatocyte nuclear factor (HNF)-1a, -1 and 4a.
They are also studying the genetics of type 1 and type 2 diabetes and carried genome-wide screens to map the genes that affect the development of these two forms of diabetes. They recently showed that sequence variation in the calpain-10 gene is associated with a 1.4-3-fold increased risk of type 2 diabetes and clinical studies suggest that variation in this gene affects risk through the effects of calpain-10 on insulin action and insulin secretion. Dr. Bell’s studies are providing a better understanding of the pathophysiology of diabetes and the diverse molecular mechanisms that can lead to hyperglycemia.
