2025 PRESENTER PROFILES
Physiologic Adaptations to Exercise in Diabetes
Sunday, June 22, at 4:30 p.m. CT
Room W180 • McCormick Place Convention Center
Physiologic Adaptations to Exercise in Pancreatic Islets
Cristina Aguayo-Mazzucato, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine,
Joslin Diabetes Center/ Harvard Medical School
What is your presentation about?
Exercise training leads to reduced cellular senescence markers in pancreatic islets. Chronic exercise training by either insulin-resistant mice or humans with type 2 diabetes induces changes in serum that activate AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), leading to reduced senescence. This pathway plays a role in the improved in vivo beta-cell function.
How do you hope your presentation will impact diabetes research or care?
By furthering our understanding of non-canonical effects of exercise on pancreatic islets and aging pathways, new therapeutic targets can be identified to preserve beta-cell function in prediabetes and early type 2 diabetes.
How did you become involved with this area of diabetes research or care?
Our group is interested in understanding the aging process, and senescence in particular, of insulin-secreting beta-cells and how this process contributes to the development of type 1 and type 2 diabetes. This knowledge will lead to the identification of new pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions that can be translated into the clinic and alter the course of the disease.