Finding ways to combat peripheral arterial disease in diabetes

Increasing IGFBP1 levels as a strategy to promote therapeutic angiogenesis in diabetes

Dr Stephen Wheatcroft is finding out if a molecule called IGFBP1 could help improve limb circulation in people with diabetes and peripheral arterial disease. People with diabetes are more prone to develop peripheral arterial disease, where poor circulation to the legs makes walking uncomfortable, and can lead to gangrene or amputation. Surgery can improve the condition, but is not suitable for everyone. One treatment option is called ‘therapeutic angiogenesis’, when doctors give people drugs that stimulate new blood vessels to grow around existing blocked vessels. But so far, clinical trial results in people with diabetes have been disappointing. Dr Wheatcroft has discovered that boosting levels of a molecule called IGFBP1 in mice stimulates healing properties and angiogenesis in blood vessel cells grown in the laboratory. He believes IGFBP1 could be particularly useful for people with diabetes as it reduces many of the damaging changes seen in the blood vessels of diabetics. In this project, Dr Wheatcroft and his team will find out if boosting IGFBP1 levels, either genetically or by using drugs, causes blood vessel growth and improves blood flow in the legs of mice with diabetes. This research may reveal a new way to treat peripheral arterial disease in people with diabetes, and might eventually lead to clinical trials to test this treatment strategy.