Marjan Slak

Jan 12, 2024 | diabetesjournals.org | Marjan Slak

For many years, it has been taught in medical textbooks that the endocrine and exocrine parts of the pancreas have separate blood supplies that do not mix. Therefore, they have been studied by different scientific communities, and patients with pancreatic disorders are treated by physicians in different medical disciplines, endocrinologists and gastroenterologists, respectively.

Jul 21, 2023 | diabetesjournals.org | Metabolic Diseases |Marjan Slak

Altered endoplasmic reticulum (ER) Ca2+ signaling has been linked with β cell dysfunction and diabetes development. Store-operated Ca2+ entry (SOCE) replenishes ER Ca2+ through reversible gating of plasma membrane Ca2+ channels by the ER Ca2+ sensor, stromal interaction molecule 1 (STIM1). To characterize the in vivo impact of STIM1 loss, mice with a β cell-specific STIM1 deletion (STIM1Δβ mice) were generated and challenged with high-fat diet.

May 31, 2023 | diabetesjournals.org | Marjan Slak |Alma Mater Europaea

The mechanisms accounting for the functional changes of α- and β-cells over the course of Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) development are largely unknown. Permitted by our established technology of high spatiotemporal resolution imaging of cytosolic Ca2+ ([Ca2+] ) dynamics on fresh pancreas tissue slices, we tracked the [Ca2+] dynamic changes, as the assessment of function, in islet α- and β-cells of female non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice along the development of spontaneous diabetes.