This video is part of “Innovations In: Type 1 Diabetes,” an editorially independent special report that was produced with financial support from Vertex.
Tom Lum: Why do we care so much about studying diabetes in random animals? Sometimes it feels like scientists are just like ...
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[Lum spins around, pretending to play a game similar to pin the tail on the donkey]
Lum: Okay, okay, let’s see, and—boop!
[Lum lands on a note that says “blind cave fish”]
Lum: [Shrugs] Why not?
So is it really that important? Yes! [Pauses] Right, sorry—I should explain.
Humans have known about diabetes for a long, long time. There’s records from across the world for thousands of years.
But until the 1900s we really didn’t know what was happening, and oftentimes the disease was simply a death sentence.
We now know that diabetes happens when the sugar traveling in your bloodstream to give your body energy can’t seem to connect to the body’s receptors right to do that job. That’s because we need insulin to make that connection happen. And in the case of diabetes, the body is either not producing enough or not using it properly.
So what does any of this have to do with blind cave fish or snails?
Well, here’s the thing to remember: Turning sugar into energy is a really fundamental thing. It’s what the famed powerhouse of the cell does! And so getting that sugar to the cells that need it is just as fundamental.
So while you or I may have only ever heard the word insulin used as a medicine for people, the chemical insulin, or a similar insulin-like chemical, is found in nearly every single animal.
And so, many animals—including common household pets—can develop diabetes, too. In fact, the reason why scientists know to treat diabetes with insulin is from studies on diabetic dogs. They were able to isolate insulin from healthy dogs and inject it into diabetic dogs.
This research would go on to win the Nobel Prize and also firmly cement the title of “man’s best friend” for dogs.
And animals less similar to us have developed other strange ways of using insulin, too. The simple cone snail, for example, uses insulin in its venom to poison fish. And still researchers are studying that venom because we could learn something from it that could make better insulin treatments for people.
Even that blind cave fish, because it lives in a cave, has inconsistent food schedules and has huge blood sugar spikes. But it doesn’t seem to suffer any negative consequences, and so we may be able to learn something from that.
Studying diabetes in animals isn’t just something that could save lives. It already has and currently is saving countless lives. So who knows what these other animals could teach us?
[Lum speaks to an image of a cone snail]
Lum: Maybe one day you’ll be man’s best friend. I think you're pretty cute.
[Lum touches the snail]
Lum: Ow! Ha, that's...Hey, guys, is the snail venom only poisonous to fish or—