Photo by Deb Gau Dr. Dequina Nicholas, an assistant professor at the University of California Irvine, talked about her research into the causes of Type 2 diabetes for an audience at Wednesday's STEM Symposium at Southwest Minnesota State University.

MARSHALL — Type 2 diabetes is a disease that impacts millions of Americans. Dr. Dequina Nicholas said she’s seen the affect of diabetes has had on her own family members, too. It’s something that has helped inspire her research trying to find a cure.

“This is the reason I got into research in the first place, was to look for a cure for Type 2 diabetes,” Nicholas said. “It may seem like a far-off dream, but I think this dream is getting closer and closer to being realized.”

Nicholas, an assistant professor at the University of California Irvine’s department of molecular biology and biochemistry, was the keynote speaker at Southwest Minnesota State University’s second annual STEM Symposium. The Symposium highlights research and topics in fields related to science, technology, engineering and math.

The response to the STEM Symposium so far has been “wonderful,” said Dr. Heather Moreland, professor of mathematics at SMSU. Moreland said she was happy to have Nicholas visit SMSU.

Moreland said she hopes to keep the Symposium going into the future, with different topics each year.

Type 2 diabetes is a disease with a wide-reaching impact, Nicholas said.

“And so I would love to understand not only how do we intervene, but how to we prevent people from developing it in the first place,” she said.

Nichols went on to explain the two major types of diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is genetic, and is caused when the body’s immune system attacks and destroys the cells it needs in order to regulate blood sugar. Type 2 diabetes develops as the body becomes resistant to insulin, a hormone that makes it possible for cells to take in blood sugar.

“You get, basically, this syndrome where your body is trying to use blood sugar but can’t access it. And then over time, this causes a host of complications and issues,” Nicholas said. She said current consensus was that Type 2 diabetes was connected to factors like having a high fat or high calorie diet, and the body releasing more and more insulin to try and compensate.

Nicholas said her research looked at the affect that the body’s immune response also has on Type 2 diabetes.

“We have known that chronic inflammation is associated with Type 2 diabetes for a very long time, like a good 20-plus years,” she said. “For the longest time we thought, maybe we can target the inflammation to cure disease, but nothing has worked yet. Scientists are stuck, and they don’t know how to get from this observation to something that can actually be curative. And this is part of where my lab comes in.”

Nicholas talked about two key research findings that her laboratory have found.

“Our laboratory has made the discovery that antibodies can bind to and recognize lipids,” or fats, she said. It was thought that the body’s immune system only reacts to proteins in the body, she said. “But that is wrong.” The lab was able to find antibodies in samples of healthy human blood plasma, that were bound to lipids like triglycerides.

“If we can basically profile antibodies from people with and without Type 2 diabetes, we can figure out what the immune system is and isn’t responding to,” Nicholas said.

Nicholas said another part of her lab’s research worked with mice that had been genetically altered to respond to lipids in a way more similar to humans. These mice, when given a high fat diet, had higher levels of immune cells in their fat tissue.

“What we found out is that there are two main (immune) cell types that we would find in the adipose tissue. We found T cells and we found B cells,” Nicholas said.

The mice with a lot of T cells in their fat tissue did not show signs of diabetes, but those with a lot of B cells had high blood sugar and poor blood sugar control, she said.

“This was a big breakthrough,” Nicholas said. “With that data, we know the goal moving forward is, how do we induce this good, this beneficial T cell response, and how do we prevent this bad, detrimental B cell response?”

Nicholas hopes that eventually, this immune response could be the key to developing a vaccine that can help protect people against Type 2 diabetes.

“My hope today is that, if you didn’t get anything else from this talk, is that one, there is hope. Two, we’re making progress. And three, we are building a better future for the generations that come after us,” she said.

Before Wednesday night’s keynote address, Nicholas also spent time with SMSU students, talking about her research and about the impact of STEM fields. She said it was important to be able to share about what science was doing to help improve people’s lives. It was also an important chance to encourage people with different backgrounds to work together on scientific problems.

“I want students to know the way we solve problems is interdisciplinary,” she said.

In her presentation, Nicholas said the different points of view students at her lab bring together was important for looking at problems in new ways.