Transporters may help delay diabetes-related reti...(tic shell find them helpful to diabetics...),Health

The damage still occurs, people still go blind from diabetic retinopathy, but it may delay it, says Dr. Martin. But what if we could find some pharmacologic agents they could transport into the eye and save it"

Dr. Ganapathy, who is Dr. Martins mentor for the NIH grant, also is working on SMCT1 and its role in the colon where his experimental evidence indicates it has a tumor-suppressive role. In the colon, SMCT1 transports short-chain fatty acids such as butyrate, which is generated by bacterial fermentation of dietary fiber. The transporter is silenced in colon cancer but when colon cancer cells are forced to express it, they die in the presence of butyrate.

The normal bacteria present in our colon are doing a lot of good things to benefit us, Dr. Ganapathy says. These findings may explain the age-old knowledge that dietary intake of fiber is protective against colon cancer.

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