Rita Basu
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Medicine & Clinical Research
About 100 million people in the US have type 2 diabetes (T2D) or prediabetes. A hallmark of these conditions is high blood sugar first thing in the morning.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Physiology
Pharmacology
- Topics
type 2 diabetes
prediabetes
insulin resistance
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Map the daytime pattern of liver glucose production after meals in adults with type 2 diabetes using a stable-isotope triple-tracer approach, while estimating insulin action and beta-cell responsiveness.
- Test whether liver glycogen stores drive high overnight glucose production in type 2 diabetes by comparing glycogen loading with no loading, measuring glycogen by NMR and gluconeogenesis with deuterium-labeled water.
- Test in a mechanistic clinical trial how metformin, insulin glargine and the glucokinase activator dorzagliatin each change liver glucose production in people with type 2 diabetes.
More about the research
Much of that sugar comes from the liver, which makes and releases glucose on its own, a process called endogenous glucose production (EGP). The team previously found that EGP stays high all night in people with T2D. But it is unclear whether it is also high throughout the day, why it is high, and how to bring it down.
Why it matters
High fasting and after-meal blood sugar drive the harm of type 2 diabetes, which affects over 400 million people worldwide. Learning when and why the liver releases too much glucose, and which drugs counter each cause, could lead to more rational treatment choices and new therapies for people with type 2 diabetes.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Dale S Edgerton
Vanderbilt University, TN·Physiology
Determine how peripheral insulin delivery, which mimics injected insulin used by people with diabetes, affects liver glucose metabolism in dogs fed a high-fat, high-fructose diet, compared with insulin entering through the hepatic portal vein.
Jonathan Campbell
Duke University, NC·Physiology
Test whether pericytes, cells lining blood vessels, are the main GIP receptor (GIPR)-expressing cells in fat tissue, using mouse models that mark and lineage-trace GIPR-positive cells over time.
Talia Hitt
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Test whether timing an oral glucose tolerance test to match each person's chronotype changes measured glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, in a randomized crossover study of late and non-late chronotype youth aged 17–23.
The school
University of Alabama at Birmingham: 45 labs on PI Pages, $866M a year on research, 166 research doctorates a year.
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