{
  "id": 12171594,
  "title": "A high-throughput assay for the measurement of Ca<sup>2+</sup> oscillations and insulin release from uniformly sized <i>mouse β-cell (MIN6</i>) spheroids",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/05/a-high-throughput-assay-for-the-measurement-of-ca-sup-2-sup",
  "topic": "health",
  "section": "Health & Medicine",
  "published": "2026-10-05T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "eLife",
    "slug": "elife",
    "url": "https://elifesciences.org/articles/110428"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Diabetes mellitus poses a rising global health concern, highlighting the need for improved anti-diabetic treatments that enhance insulin secretion from pancreatic β-cells. Traditional screening techniques employ 2D β-cell cultures, which fail to replicate the 3D structure and cell-to-cell interactions found in pancreatic islets of Langerhans. Current 3D culture models suffer from high costs, technical complexity, and limited compatibility with high-throughput screening setups. To address this, a method was devised to create 19 β-cell spheroids of uniform size in each well of a 96-well plate, utilizing PEG-based hydrogels and mouse insulinoma 6 (MIN6) cells. With this technique, simultaneous, real-time monitoring of Ca2+ signals in up to 1824 individual spheroids upon glucose and compound exposure became possible. The findings revealed that heightened glucose triggers concentration-dependent Ca2+ oscillations in each spheroid, with these oscillations being responsive to ATP-sensitive K+ channel modulators and correlated with insulin release frequency. Moreover, the neurosteroid pregnenolone sulfate, a TRPM3 channel agonist, elevated the frequency of glucose-stimulated Ca2+ oscillations and boosted insulin release, while the TRPM3 antagonist isosakuranetin suppressed these effects. This study successfully introduces a cost-efficient, scalable 3D β-cell platform for high-throughput screening of insulin release-modulating compounds, offering promising prospects for drug discovery and tailored therapies for diabetes management.",
  "summary": "Diabetes mellitus is a rapidly growing global health challenge, necessitating the development of more effective anti-diabetic therapies, including drugs that improve insulin release from pancreatic β-cells. Traditional high-throughput screening methods typically rely on 2D β-cell cultures, but such cultures do not mimic the 3D organization and cell-to-cell communication of β-cells in pancreatic…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}