Rescue That Frogs!

Our research mission is to save “Boiling Frogs”.

The frog is our heart. It’s dying slowly by sugar rush.
Diabetes kills two out of three patients by causing heart disease. It’s not a sudden death. It is a slow death process. The fatal stress is creeping on your heart before you know it. Diabetes gradually turns up the heat, but your heart muscle cells don’t know they’re dying. It is like a frog in boiling water.

When the nutrient turns to poison

Our body needs energy. To deliver it, heart keeps pumping out blood to every end of your body. So, heart also use tons of energy for that. Sugar is a nutrient, a useful energy source. Why does the nutrient turn into poison? There are three types of nutrients, carbohydrates which are the source of sugar, proteins, and fats or oils. Heart likes to use more oil than sugar as a fuel for beating endlessly, because our body can store fats so that it will be supplied continuously all the time. But heart sometimes need carbs as fuel especially when you are working hard and needs to pump out more blood to supply energy to whole body. Heart muscle cells is metabolic omnivore, meaning eats anything. It is a secret to keep your heart cells staying healthy. If the nutrients balance is broken, like too much sugar, heart doesn’t have much choice to keep in good shape. Better understanding of nutrients balance and knowing how the heart choose the fuel type when it’s imbalanced, are essential for giving better heart life.

Why do the heart cells fail to jump out from the boiling pot to save themselves?

We don’t know when sugar, a powerful fuel, turns into poison yet. But we partially know where the sugar stress builds up inside the heart muscle. What we found is that too much sugar injures lysosomes. Lysosomes are the defense force in your heart cells. They are in charge of breaking down and removing damaged debris inside the cells for your health. High glucose, the sugar, is a moderate but still fatal stress to the cells. Our cell defense system is compromised and fails to respond to this sneaking stress. The frog already lost the power to jump out.

Why is the lysosome vulnerable?

“Physician, heal thyself”. Lysosomes, the ER physician in cells, do. There is a way to repairing or fixing damaged lysosome. They can take care of themselves while they are also maintaining the other parts of cell. But, once the job is overwhelmed, this lysosome-based cellular healthcare system easily falls. So far, we have no good panel to monitor the health condition of lysosome itself. Without knowing their condition, it is hard to find the way to cure, support, or help them. Developing a series for better evaluation of the lysosome health is one of urgent problems to solve.

How to protect your heart muscle?

Health monitoring of lysosome is the first step. What else can we do? How can we protect, or fix the damaged lysosomes? Now, we are seeking the ways to repair the injury of lysosome to make sure they protect by themselves so that they can protect your heart. Lysosomes are damaged by scratching the surface. That leaks the vital items and lysosome loses control of them. The leaked guys do some bad things elsewhere that could kill your heart eventually. There are some drugs known that protects lysosomes. Some strengthen the surface, and some helps to put a patch for sealing the hole of injury. That is currently under investigation in our lab.

There is Plan B. Diabetes is a slow death process. So, lysosomes don’t know they’re in danger like boiling frogs. What if we give a shock to wake them up and get them ready to react to the sneaking stress? This plan B might sound silly, but this may be more effective like taking a vaccine shot for training your body defense system even before the situation gets more serious. We have some ideas for giving a minimal but sufficient shock to wake the lysosomes. The concept should be tested in culture dish and practical way will be designed in near future.

(Image by Filip Kruchlikfrom Pixabay)