Matt Wortham
@worthamlab.bsky.social
Assistant Professor at the Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes at University of Colorado Anschutz. The Wortham lab studies how nutrients govern adaptive and maladaptive responses by pancreatic beta cells in health and metabolic disease. www.worthamlab.org
Reposted by Matt Wortham
Deadlines are approaching (some next week!) for @keystoneSymposia.bsky.social #IsletBiology & #Diabetes : #BetaCell Compensation, Failure & Recovery, this March in Breckenridge! See scholarship, abstract and discount reg dates: keysym.us/KSDiabetes26 #KSDiabetes26
Islet Biology and Diabetes: Beta Cell Compensation, Failure and Recovery | Keystone Symposia
Join us at the Keystone Symposia on Islet Biology and Diabetes: Beta Cell Compensation, Failure and Recovery, March 2026, in Breckenridge, with field leaders!
keysym.us
November 10, 2025 at 10:59 PM
Deadlines are approaching (some next week!) for @keystoneSymposia.bsky.social #IsletBiology & #Diabetes : #BetaCell Compensation, Failure & Recovery, this March in Breckenridge! See scholarship, abstract and discount reg dates: keysym.us/KSDiabetes26 #KSDiabetes26
Reposted by Matt Wortham
Excited to share my latest postdoc work on systemic metabolic homeostasis! We show that nutrient consumption fluxes compete, and this competitive catabolism helps explain why obesity drives diabetes. Explore the model with our interactive web app: compcat.princeton.edu
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
October 31, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Excited to share my latest postdoc work on systemic metabolic homeostasis! We show that nutrient consumption fluxes compete, and this competitive catabolism helps explain why obesity drives diabetes. Explore the model with our interactive web app: compcat.princeton.edu
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Reposted by Matt Wortham
🚨Excited to kick off our online seminar series on Metabolism in Development and Physiology!
Please help us grow a collaborative and supportive community by joining (<1min): forms.gle/Y8QzucogKKrZ...
#Metabolism #Development #StemCells
Please RT! 🙏
Please help us grow a collaborative and supportive community by joining (<1min): forms.gle/Y8QzucogKKrZ...
#Metabolism #Development #StemCells
Please RT! 🙏
October 28, 2025 at 4:39 PM
🚨Excited to kick off our online seminar series on Metabolism in Development and Physiology!
Please help us grow a collaborative and supportive community by joining (<1min): forms.gle/Y8QzucogKKrZ...
#Metabolism #Development #StemCells
Please RT! 🙏
Please help us grow a collaborative and supportive community by joining (<1min): forms.gle/Y8QzucogKKrZ...
#Metabolism #Development #StemCells
Please RT! 🙏
Reposted by Matt Wortham
Love these beautiful pictures! Congrats to Laith et al!!
October 15, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Love these beautiful pictures! Congrats to Laith et al!!
Reposted by Matt Wortham
Excited to share our Commentary in JCI. Exploring how SIRT2 regulates human beta cell proliferation
www.jci.org/articles/vie...
@jci.org
www.jci.org/articles/vie...
@jci.org
October 10, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Excited to share our Commentary in JCI. Exploring how SIRT2 regulates human beta cell proliferation
www.jci.org/articles/vie...
@jci.org
www.jci.org/articles/vie...
@jci.org
It's great to see the final version of our SIRT2 paper in JCI along with an astute commentary from trailblazers in beta cell regeneration—thanks for highlighting our work! @likatz.bsky.social @donaldscottmssm.bsky.social @jci.org @sanderlaberlin.bsky.social tinyurl.com/y6rx69x7 tinyurl.com/ydvv9u2s
October 2, 2025 at 5:46 PM
It's great to see the final version of our SIRT2 paper in JCI along with an astute commentary from trailblazers in beta cell regeneration—thanks for highlighting our work! @likatz.bsky.social @donaldscottmssm.bsky.social @jci.org @sanderlaberlin.bsky.social tinyurl.com/y6rx69x7 tinyurl.com/ydvv9u2s
Reposted by Matt Wortham
I am excited to announce our paper “Beta cell dysfunction occurs independently of insulitis in type 1 diabetes pathogenesis” is out in Cell Reports! @eaphelps.bsky.social
www.cell.com/cell-reports...
www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Beta cell dysfunction occurs independently of insulitis in type 1 diabetes pathogenesis
Huber et al. used live pancreas slices from donors with recently diagnosed type 1
diabetes to reveal beta cell dysfunction independent of local immune cells. Real-time
imaging and molecular analyses u...
www.cell.com
August 28, 2025 at 2:24 PM
I am excited to announce our paper “Beta cell dysfunction occurs independently of insulitis in type 1 diabetes pathogenesis” is out in Cell Reports! @eaphelps.bsky.social
www.cell.com/cell-reports...
www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Reposted by Matt Wortham
Join us for the 2025 Rachmiel Levine-Arthur Riggs Diabetes Research Symposium. We have an amazing program this year focusing on type 1 #diabetes. We have also extended the abstract submission deadline to Sept 19. Register and submit your abstract a www.levinesymposium.com
August 25, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Join us for the 2025 Rachmiel Levine-Arthur Riggs Diabetes Research Symposium. We have an amazing program this year focusing on type 1 #diabetes. We have also extended the abstract submission deadline to Sept 19. Register and submit your abstract a www.levinesymposium.com
Reposted by Matt Wortham
It was great fun to write this review with friends and colleagues Melkam Kebede, Belinda Yau, @jinghughes.bsky.social and Julien Ghislain
New review highlights recent progress in our understanding of the role of the beta cell in type 2 diabetes. #diabetes #islet @jinghughes.bsky.social @vpoitout.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1... 🔓
The role of the beta cell in type 2 diabetes: new findings from the last 5 years - Diabetologia
Recent advances in genome-wide approaches, the availability of isolated human islets for research and the evaluation of novel incretin mimetics in large clinical trials have brought about remarkable p...
link.springer.com
August 18, 2025 at 7:22 PM
It was great fun to write this review with friends and colleagues Melkam Kebede, Belinda Yau, @jinghughes.bsky.social and Julien Ghislain
Simultaneous in vivo calcium imaging of up to 100 islets coupled with CGM measurements in lean and ob/ob mice—this is impressive! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Glycemia Shift Pancreatic Islets Rhythmicity via δ-α Cell in vivo, Impairment in Diabetes
Blood glucose homeostasis relies on the well-coordinated rhythmic activity of millions of islets throughout the pancreas. Islet rhythmicity is triggered by glucose elevation and mediated by paracrine ...
www.biorxiv.org
August 15, 2025 at 4:59 PM
Simultaneous in vivo calcium imaging of up to 100 islets coupled with CGM measurements in lean and ob/ob mice—this is impressive! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Out today in @jclinical-invest.bsky.social! We discovered a novel regulator of adaptive beta cell proliferation, the protein deacetylase SIRT2, that acts through a metabolic mechanism. Bluetorial below (1/5).
tinyurl.com/ydvv9u2s
tinyurl.com/ydvv9u2s
JCI -
The protein deacetylase SIRT2 exerts metabolic control over adaptive β cell proliferation
tinyurl.com
July 31, 2025 at 9:32 PM
Out today in @jclinical-invest.bsky.social! We discovered a novel regulator of adaptive beta cell proliferation, the protein deacetylase SIRT2, that acts through a metabolic mechanism. Bluetorial below (1/5).
tinyurl.com/ydvv9u2s
tinyurl.com/ydvv9u2s
With credit to @huisinglab.bsky.social for inspiring the tradition, today we bid farewell to our very first lab member Sean Lee who is joining the Cell Biology, Stem Cells, and Development PhD program here at @cuanschutz.bsky.social. Best of luck Sean, we expect great things from you!
June 30, 2025 at 5:00 PM
With credit to @huisinglab.bsky.social for inspiring the tradition, today we bid farewell to our very first lab member Sean Lee who is joining the Cell Biology, Stem Cells, and Development PhD program here at @cuanschutz.bsky.social. Best of luck Sean, we expect great things from you!
These are two important papers that profile beta cell excitotoxicity in response to a sulfonylurea or the VDAC1-stabilizing molecule SW016789. Comparing these studies should make for an excellent journal club. Congrats to all authors! @kalwat.bsky.social tinyurl.com/fwrzrtk9 tinyurl.com/3nzfsp79
VDAC1 is a target for pharmacologically induced insulin hypersecretion in β cells
β cells are dysfunctional in type 2 diabetes (T2D) and congenital hyperinsulinism (HI), but the mechanisms linking hypersecretion to β cell failure ar…
www.sciencedirect.com
June 30, 2025 at 3:17 PM
These are two important papers that profile beta cell excitotoxicity in response to a sulfonylurea or the VDAC1-stabilizing molecule SW016789. Comparing these studies should make for an excellent journal club. Congrats to all authors! @kalwat.bsky.social tinyurl.com/fwrzrtk9 tinyurl.com/3nzfsp79
Reposted by Matt Wortham
Review on metabolism in stem cell derived beta cells from former PhD student with us, Frank Lin. Cell Reports @cp-cellreports.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Glucose metabolism and regulation in establishing human stem cell-derived β cell maturation
Efforts to generate mature stem cell-derived β (SC-β) cells have been ongoing for decades, yet their functional performance still falls short of prima…
www.sciencedirect.com
June 25, 2025 at 9:49 AM
Review on metabolism in stem cell derived beta cells from former PhD student with us, Frank Lin. Cell Reports @cp-cellreports.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Matt Wortham
How do non-coding variants in enhancers lead to disease? Happy to share our recent work, led by @ewholling.bsky.social, in which we discovered that poised chromatin sensitizes enhancers to aberrant activation by non-coding mutations, contributing to disease. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/
June 23, 2025 at 12:57 PM
How do non-coding variants in enhancers lead to disease? Happy to share our recent work, led by @ewholling.bsky.social, in which we discovered that poised chromatin sensitizes enhancers to aberrant activation by non-coding mutations, contributing to disease. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/
Reposted by Matt Wortham
Very excited to share new work on the origins of beta cell senescence in #T1D led by talented PhD student Jasmine Pipella! 🥂🎉 online today!
diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/art...
diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/art...
Autoreactive T Cells and Cytokine Stress Drive β-Cell Senescence Entry and Accumulation in Type 1 Diabetes
Type 1 diabetes (T1D) results from a complex dialogue between the immune system and islets characterized by T cell–mediated autoimmune destruction of pancr
diabetesjournals.org
June 11, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Very excited to share new work on the origins of beta cell senescence in #T1D led by talented PhD student Jasmine Pipella! 🥂🎉 online today!
diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/art...
diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/art...
Reposted by Matt Wortham
Talked to @KateZernike at @nytimes about my journey and the current moment for scientists in the U.S.
“Ardem Patapoutian’s story is not just the American dream, it is the dream of American science.”
Read the article here. No subscription required:
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/u...
“Ardem Patapoutian’s story is not just the American dream, it is the dream of American science.”
Read the article here. No subscription required:
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/u...
The U.S. Lit a Beacon for Science. Under Trump, Scientists Fear It’s Dimming
www.nytimes.com
June 3, 2025 at 10:58 AM
Talked to @KateZernike at @nytimes about my journey and the current moment for scientists in the U.S.
“Ardem Patapoutian’s story is not just the American dream, it is the dream of American science.”
Read the article here. No subscription required:
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/u...
“Ardem Patapoutian’s story is not just the American dream, it is the dream of American science.”
Read the article here. No subscription required:
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/u...
Reposted by Matt Wortham
Actin remodeling in beta cells adds new layers of upstream regulation - Congrats! @ronnyhelman.bsky.social
Happy to share a work from the Helman lab on how beta cells sense and control their insulin secretion by Krell et al. in @CellReports.
Beta cells intrinsically sense and limit their secretory activity via mTORC1-RhoA signaling: Cell Reports www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Beta cells intrinsically sense and limit their secretory activity via mTORC1-RhoA signaling: Cell Reports www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Beta cells intrinsically sense and limit their secretory activity via mTORC1-RhoA signaling
Krell et al. show that mTORC1 in β cells acts as an activity sensor, activated by
the same signals that trigger insulin secretion. This activation, in turn, inhibits
insulin release via RhoA-dependent...
www.cell.com
May 19, 2025 at 11:33 AM
Actin remodeling in beta cells adds new layers of upstream regulation - Congrats! @ronnyhelman.bsky.social
Reposted by Matt Wortham
Check out this pre-print from Vira Kravets, Andraz Stozer and myself, for the influence of alpha cells on heterogenous islet Ca2+ responses, including first-responders and first phase timing/amplitude. Was great to be part of this!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Role of GLP1-receptor-mediated α-β-cell communication in functional β-cell heterogeneity.
While the islet β-cells were traditionally viewed as a singular functional entity, findings of 1970s and up until recent years, reveal that individual β-cells differ in their calcium dynamics and insu...
www.biorxiv.org
April 29, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Check out this pre-print from Vira Kravets, Andraz Stozer and myself, for the influence of alpha cells on heterogenous islet Ca2+ responses, including first-responders and first phase timing/amplitude. Was great to be part of this!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Matt Wortham
Check out my talk this afternoon where I’ll share our latest work! #isletbiology #metabolism #IMM The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston)
April 3, 2025 at 1:44 PM
Check out my talk this afternoon where I’ll share our latest work! #isletbiology #metabolism #IMM The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston)
Our lab website www.worthamlab.org is now live! By the way, we are recruiting at all levels. If our work interests you, consider joining us for cutting edge research in a collegial environment at University of Colorado Anschutz. Not to mention that Denver is a great place to live.
Wortham Lab
www.worthamlab.org
March 25, 2025 at 3:57 PM
Our lab website www.worthamlab.org is now live! By the way, we are recruiting at all levels. If our work interests you, consider joining us for cutting edge research in a collegial environment at University of Colorado Anschutz. Not to mention that Denver is a great place to live.
Reposted by Matt Wortham
A fungus (Candida dubliniensis) macrophage axis in neonatal mice is required for optimal beta cell development and function throughout the lifespan with the fungus also exerting beta cell regenerative properties in experimental models of #diabetes @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Neonatal fungi promote lifelong metabolic health through macrophage-dependent β cell development
Loss of early-life microbial diversity is correlated with diabetes, yet mechanisms by which microbes influence disease remain elusive. We report a critical neonatal window in mice when microbiota disr...
www.science.org
March 6, 2025 at 7:49 PM
A fungus (Candida dubliniensis) macrophage axis in neonatal mice is required for optimal beta cell development and function throughout the lifespan with the fungus also exerting beta cell regenerative properties in experimental models of #diabetes @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Matt Wortham
Functional #insulin secretory defects occur in the remaining mass of beta cells during human #T1D pathogenesis not strictly correlated with the extent of insulitis #islets www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
February 25, 2025 at 1:38 AM
Functional #insulin secretory defects occur in the remaining mass of beta cells during human #T1D pathogenesis not strictly correlated with the extent of insulitis #islets www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Matt Wortham
Abstracts for #METPHYS2025 are due this Friday!
There are multiple short talks available!
FEB28 is also the deadline for the Vanderbilt Vibrant program
This initiative will provide several awards of $2000 to help new investigators attend
www.sablesys.com/metphys2025-...
There are multiple short talks available!
FEB28 is also the deadline for the Vanderbilt Vibrant program
This initiative will provide several awards of $2000 to help new investigators attend
www.sablesys.com/metphys2025-...
February 24, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Abstracts for #METPHYS2025 are due this Friday!
There are multiple short talks available!
FEB28 is also the deadline for the Vanderbilt Vibrant program
This initiative will provide several awards of $2000 to help new investigators attend
www.sablesys.com/metphys2025-...
There are multiple short talks available!
FEB28 is also the deadline for the Vanderbilt Vibrant program
This initiative will provide several awards of $2000 to help new investigators attend
www.sablesys.com/metphys2025-...
Reposted by Matt Wortham
We link molecular and functional phenotypes of islet cells from donors with type 1 diabetes to understand impaired insulin and glucagon secretion. Immune signalling, nuclear exclusion, mTOR and lysosomes in alpha cell dysfunction.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.20.639325v1
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.20.639325v1
February 21, 2025 at 12:40 PM
We link molecular and functional phenotypes of islet cells from donors with type 1 diabetes to understand impaired insulin and glucagon secretion. Immune signalling, nuclear exclusion, mTOR and lysosomes in alpha cell dysfunction.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.20.639325v1
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.20.639325v1