 Could
Vitamin D have a role in diabetes?
August 2007
On Mondays, Jenny Gunton
sees diabetes patients at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital. And from Tuesday to
Friday, she heads up a diabetes research laboratory at the Garvan Institute of
Medical Research. She’s also the mother of two-and-a-half-year-old “Action Boy”.
Gunton is one of a growing
band of physician-scientists. “It’s not a financially sensible decision, but I
enjoy it,” says Gunton. “It’s also a better way for me to ask questions and
attempt to answer them. And in that way, I help my patients.”
And now, with the help of
her L'ORÉAL Australia
For Women In Science Fellowship she will be exploring the
link between Vitamin D and diabetes.
“We’ve found that Vitamin D
deficiency is very common in diabetics. This is a real worry because we are
starting to see more cases of Vitamin D deficiency in Australia. One in four of
normal healthy women in the Sydney area are now Vitamin D deficient,” says
Gunton.
And that figure rockets to
62% in people with adult onset diabetes. Gunton wants to determine exactly what
Vitamin D has to do with diabetes.
Gunton began working on
diabetes because, “It is the most common cause of adult blindness, end-stage
kidney disease, amputations and heart disease. With good treatment you can
prevent these complications to some extent. You can do something useful. I like
that.”
During the course of her
PhD, when she was investigating metformin, an important drug used in diabetes
therapy, she began corresponding with Ron Kahn at the Joslin Diabetes Center of
the Harvard Medical School.
Then she was awarded a
National Health and Medical Research Council post-doctoral fellowship which
enabled her to go and work with Kahn for two years.
At Harvard she was able to
use the latest technology to study the differences in genetic activity between
the insulin-producing pancreatic beta-cells in people who had diabetes and those
who did not.
What she found was that
diabetics lacked the protein ARNT, one of the master switches which controls the
release of insulin. But this transcription factor works in partnership with
several others, one of which is the receptor for Vitamin D.
This suggests that Vitamin
D deficiency may play a role in the onset of diabetes. But Vitamin D is only
produced by the body when the skin is exposed to sunlight, and that sets up a
potential conflict with concerns about skin cancer.
To investigate the link
between Vitamin D and diabetes, Gunton and her laboratory will use the money
from the L’Oréal Fellowship to import two strains of mutant mice, one of which
lacks the Vitamin D receptor and the other of which cannot produce Vitamin D.
Already, Jenny Gunton’s
record as a researcher is outstanding. Her most recent publication on ARNT,
published in the high impact scientific journal Cell, has been among the top 10
most downloaded papers from that journal’s website for three months. It was also
selected for a commentary in the journal, Nature Medicine.
Gunton reviews papers for
significant scientific journals, and has several patented therapies for diabetes
undergoing clinical trials at present. Despite her success, she clearly has her
feet on the ground. In 10 years, she says, she pretty much wants to be doing the
same things as she is doing now—just at a higher level.
“I’ll still be studying
beta-cell function, but I’d like to have a drug in trial which can significantly
improve the treatment of diabetes.”
2000-2003 PhD The
University of Sydney, Australia
1995-2000 Admitted as a
Fellow of the Royal Australian College of Physicians, Australia
1987-1992 Bachelor of
Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery The University of Queensland, Australia
Career highlights
2005- Senior Research
Officer, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, Australia
2005- Staff Specialist,
Diabetes and Endocrinology, Westmead Hospital, Sydney, Australia
2005- Conjoint Senior
Lecturer, University of Sydney and University of New South Wales, Sydney,
Australia
2003-2005 Post-doctoral
Fellowship, Kahn Laboratory, Joslin Diabetes Center & Harvard Medical School,
University of Washington, U.S.
2000-2003 PhD student at
the Kolling Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, Australia and staff
specialist, Westmead Hospital, Sydney, Australia
1998-1999 Endocrinology
registrar at Royal North Shore Hospital and Clinical Associate in Medicine at
The University of Sydney, Australia
1998 Head of House
Committee for the Resident Medical Officers’ Association
1997 Medical Registrar at
Royal Brisbane Hospital and Associate Clinical Lecturer in Medicine at The
University of Queensland, Australia
1995-1996 Medical Registrar
at Royal North Shore Hospital, Australia
1993 Intern at Royal
Brisbane Hospital, Australia
Honours, grants and awards
2007-2011 National Health
and Medical Research Council / DART Career development award
2003-2007 National Health
and Medical Research Council CJ Martin Post-doctoral Fellowship
2004 Royal Australasian
College of Physicians Pfizer Research Fellowship
2003 Royal Australasian
College of Physicians Servier Fellowship
2003 Senior Young
Investigator Award from the Endocrine Society of Australia
2000-2003 NHMRC
Postgraduate Medical Scholarship
1999 Young Investigator of
the Year Award from the Australasian Diabetes In pregnancy Society
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