IBRI IN THE NEWS: Researchers working to understand why some patients with autoimmune diseases develop diabetes instead of arthritis

November 21, 2019

Senior Research Fellow Decio Eizirik featured in BioSpace

Source: BioSpace - Mark Terry

Autoimmune diseases are immune system disorders where the body’s immune system attacks its own tissues. Examples of common autoimmune diseases include rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, inflammatory bowel disease, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis (MS) and others.

A peculiarity of autoimmune diseases is that they have many genes in common, but they develop differently. For example, why does a patient with an autoimmune disease become a type 1 diabetic rather than have rheumatoid arthritis?

Decio L. Eizirik, a researcher at Université Libre de Bruxelles’ Centre for Diabetes Research in Belgium, who is also a senior research fellow at the Indiana Biosciences Research Institute, recently published research in the journal Nature Genetics that found significant insight into this question. Eizirik took time to speak with BioSpace about the research and how a researcher in Belgium came to collaborate with researchers in Indiana, Spain, the UK and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

To read the full article, go to BioSpace.