The Effect of Nopales on Glucose Uptake in Cells

Student: Kevin Witt

Faculty Mentor: Monica Lares

Chemistry

College of Science, Technology, and Business

Opuntia ficus-indica (OFI) has a known hypoglycemic effect in people who suffer from diabetes. This effect is consistently observed when OFI is eaten along with other foods. The mechanism behind this effect is not well understood, though our lab group believes there are multiple mechanisms that cause it. One of the ways we hypothesize that OFI is able to lower blood sugar is by mimicking an insulin signal to certain cells in the body, signaling them to increase glucose uptake and utilization. Pursuant to testing that hypothesis, our lab has been gearing up to culture various lines of cells as well as developing an assay for measuring glucose uptake by these cells using a fluorescent analog of glucose. So far, we have practiced honing our culturing techniques using Retinal Pigment Epithelial cells (RPE-1). These cells do not, however, react to insulin by uptaking glucose; therefore, we are currently researching a more appropriate cell line for our actual experiment.