What do online grocery shopping, venomous snails, and foot biomechanics have in common?
All three, along with a plethora of other topics, were research subjects under investigation at the 2024 University of Utah Health Diabetes and Metabolism Research Center (DMRC) retreat. With more than 200 attendees, this year’s retreat had the largest turnout in the history of the event.
The diversity of thought at the retreat was a testament to the scope of the problem the researchers sought to address. About 15% of U.S. adults have diabetes, and despite increasing public awareness, the prevalence of diabetes is increasing at one of the fastest rates of any serious chronic disease. No one-size-fits-all solution can address a public health crisis of this magnitude. But many solutions, spanning the spectrum from policy interventions to drug development, could make a real difference.
“This is the one time we get together as a community every year to celebrate the breadth of the terrific research being done here,” said Scott Summers, PhD, co-director of the DMRC and chair of the Department of Nutrition & Integrative Physiology at the University of Utah, in opening remarks. “I’m looking forward to a great day.”
Building on what works
Diabetes and metabolic disorders are strongly influenced by one’s environment and health behaviors, like physical activity and the availability of healthy food. Consequently, much of the research presented at the conference focused on developing policy solutions or behavioral interventions to prevent or treat metabolic conditions.
Many researchers built their work on a foundation of proven interventions, seeking to address gaps in current solutions.
For instance, the WIC program, which includes nutrition counseling and food benefits, is an essential public health program that’s known to support healthy weight and nutrition for kids. “For those of us involved in obesity treatment and prevention, it’s one of our most important early interventions,” says Jennie Hill, PhD, associate professor of population health sciences at U of U Health. She’s working to make WIC benefits more accessible to people facing transportation challenges or stigma by enabling people to use their benefits via online grocery shopping. Her philosophy? “Let’s improve what we already have.”
That same strategy of improvement was evident in the efforts of Katie Baucom, PhD, assistant professor of clinical psychology at the U, to find ways to increase engagement with a type 2 diabetes prevention program. Her strategy is to bring in participants’ romantic partners to help them achieve their wellness goals. “There’s a lot of potential for partners to be good supports for lifestyle change, but they don’t always know how,” she says. By changing that, she hopes to increase participation in the program.
Caitlin Golden, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in population health sciences at U of U Health, is also working to bring established interventions to more people by training community members in remote regions to assess local implementation of a family healthy weight program.
Discovering new biology
Other researchers zoomed in to the biology of metabolic disorders in search of risk factors and drug targets.
Helena Safavi-Hemami, PhD, associate professor of biochemistry at U of U Health, spoke on her work to find better diabetes medications in an unexpected place: the so-called “doppelganger toxins” that many venomous animals produce to hijack biological processes. The specificity and potency that make such toxins effective could also provide insights for drug development.
Other scientists investigated the biological risk factors affecting metabolic disorders. Jacob Taloa, a research associate in the Molecular Medicine Program at U of U Health, is looking into the genetics affecting the higher rates of diabetes and kidney failure observed in Samoan and Tongan patients. “You often see us in movies and in professional sports, but you rarely see the alarming health statistics that we face as a community,” he says. His work is finding potential root causes for those differences, a crucial step towards better therapies.
And Jenna Burnett, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in health and kinesiology at U of U Health, is figuring out which biomechanical factors lead to increased foot temperature as you walk, a crucial issue for people with diabetes who may have impaired temperature regulation in their feet.
A team sport
As expected from an event with such a wide variety of topics, no one person was an expert in everything, but attendees were excited to learn new angles and get fresh perspectives. Talks and poster sessions united scientists ranging from undergraduate students attending for class credit to doctors visiting from other countries and U of U Health faculty seeking to implement new health interventions.
Meghan Curtin, a graduate researcher in biochemistry at U of U Health studying how fat cells affect cancer resistance, spoke to the spirit of curiosity that pervaded the conference. “You tend to get so in your own work, it’s good to take a step back and see what’s happening throughout the U,” she said. “The depth of topics has been phenomenal.”
As much as researchers acknowledged the seriousness of the problems facing diabetes and metabolism research, the mood at the symposium was one of progress and collaboration. As Will Holland, PhD, associate professor of nutrition and integrative physiology at U of U Health, said in his research talk, “Science is a team sport.”
At the U of U Health DMRC symposium, the team had never been bigger.