Date: Friday, February 21, 1997 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact:
Birgit An der Lan (301)493-4541 or Clarissa Wittenberg (301)
496-5135 Genetically Engineered Mouse Model for Diabetes
Developed A team of researchers from the Joslin Diabetes Center
at Harvard, the National Institute of Diabetes Digestive and
Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), and the National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development (NICHD) of the National Institutes
of Health (NIH) have genetically engineered a diabetic mouse by
disrupting genes that are essential for insulin action. A report
of this work, authored by Jens Brhning, Jonathan Winnay, Susan
Bonner-Weir, Simeon Taylor, Domenico Accili, and Ronald Kahn,
appears in the February 21 issue of Cell. These mice are
resistant to insulin and become diabetic in adulthood, and are
thus a model for adult-onset diabetes, the type of diabetes
known as non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) or type
II diabetes. It is estimated that the disease affects five
percent or more of this country's p