{"id":219277,"date":"2025-08-02T08:02:50","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T13:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/sugar-layer-on-beta-cells-prevents-immune-system-from-causing-type-1-diabetes"},"modified":"2025-08-02T08:02:50","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T13:02:50","slug":"sugar-layer-on-beta-cells-prevents-immune-system-from-causing-type-1-diabetes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/sugar-layer-on-beta-cells-prevents-immune-system-from-causing-type-1-diabetes","title":{"rendered":"Sugar layer on beta cells prevents immune system from causing type 1 diabetes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/sugar-layer-on-beta-cells-prevents-immune-system-from-causing-type-1-diabetes2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientific breakthroughs in one disease don\u2019t always shed light on treating other diseases. But that\u2019s been the surprising journey of one Mayo Clinic research team. After identifying a sugar molecule that cancer cells use on their surfaces to hide from the immune system, the researchers have found the same molecule may eventually help in the treatment of type 1 diabetes, once known as juvenile diabetes.<\/p>\n<p>Type 1 diabetes is a chronic autoimmune condition in which the immune system errantly attacks <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/pancreatic+beta+cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">pancreatic beta cells<\/a> that produce insulin. The disease is caused by genetic and other factors and affects an estimated 1.3 million people in the U.S.<\/p>\n<p>In their studies, the Mayo Clinic researchers took a cancer mechanism and turned it on its head. Cancer cells use a variety of methods to evade <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/immune+response\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">immune response<\/a>, including coating themselves in a <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/sugar+molecule\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">sugar molecule<\/a> known as sialic acid. The researchers found in a preclinical model of type 1 diabetes that it\u2019s possible to dress up beta cells with the same sugar molecule, enabling the immune system to tolerate the cells.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientific breakthroughs in one disease don\u2019t always shed light on treating other diseases. But that\u2019s been the surprising journey of one Mayo Clinic research team. After identifying a sugar molecule that cancer cells use on their surfaces to hide from the immune system, the researchers have found the same molecule may eventually help in the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}