According to the reports from Nutrition and Health Survey in Taiwan, the overall prevalence of MS was 25.7% in men and 20.4% in women during 2005-2008. Approximate 25% of people whose ages over 65 have diabetes. Furthermore, the prevalence of impaired fasting glucose among Taiwanese adults and adolescents is 35.8% and 22%, respectively. The overall prevalence of overweight and obesity was approximate 50% in men, 35% in women, 30% in senior high school students and 26% in junior high school students.

The survey indicates that control of MS and diabetes is an emergent task and a big challenge for Taiwanese. Hence, discovery of the diverse underlying environmental risk factors of MS and its complications will be the base and an emergent task for the development of effective prevention methods. Establishing “Research Platform for Insulin Resistance and Diabetes” will help us to improve the technology and quality for studying metabolic diseases and their complications.

In this project, we set up the following goals:

1. Set up of a cell bank for 3T3-L1 fibroblast, human adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cell, human preadipocyte, mouse C2C12 myoblast.
2. Differentiation of mature adipocytes and myotube.
3. Observation of cell differentiation, lipid droplet morphology, lipolysis, ATP production, free fatty acid release.
4. Observation of insulin resistance, including 6-NBDG uptake, insulin signaling pathway (IRS-1/ PI3K/AKT/GLUT-4/JNK/SOCS3), and stable transfected cells with green fluorescence fused GLUT-4 protein.
5. Set up of obese, insulin resistant and diabetic animal models using STZ injection, high-fat-diet feeding and high fructose in drinking water.
6. Measurements for body weight, blood sugar, oral glucose tolerance test, insulin tolerance test, HOMA-IR.
7. Collection of blood and tissue samples, tissue fixation, H&E staining, immunohistochemistry and morphology reading.