Kisspeptin Modulates Mitochondrial Metabolic State and Potentiates Glucose Stimulated Insulin Secretion in INS 832/3 Cells and Pseudo-Islets
Authors: Harnois Emily , Aragaki Adam , Papas Klearchos , Weber Craig , Lynch Ronald 
Published: May 2023

Glucagon Like Peptide-1 (GLP-1) and Kisspeptin (KP) receptors are co-expressed on pancreatic β-cells, and activation of both receptors potentiates glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS). Due to their roles in enhancing GSIS, GLP-1 and KP represent targets for controlling blood glucose in patients with diabetes. Unlike GLP-1, KP has a low affinity for receptor activation (EC50 GLP-1 ~20 nM vs KP ~1 μM) making it difficult to use as a therapeutic agent. GLP-1 has been shown to potentiate insulin secretion via cAMP dependent pathways. Conversely, previous studies in isolated rat islets of Langerhans indicated that KP potentiation of GSIS was not dependent on cAMP and may be related to changes in beta cell metabolism (Schwetz TA, et al., Differential Stimulation of Insulin Secretion by GLP-1 and Kisspeptin-10. PLoS ONE 9: e113020, 2014). In the current studies, we evaluated KP signaling in comparison to GLP-1, in order to determine if there are unique components to target in the KP signaling pathway. The effects of GLP-1 and a 10 amino acid analog of KP (KP10) on insulin secretion and cell signaling were compared in insulinoma INS 832/3 cells. As previously described, KP had no effect on insulin secretion in the absence of glucose. In the presence of stimulatory glucose (15.5 mM), KP10 (10 μM) doubled insulin secretion (GSIS without KP10= 471.3 +/- 83.8, GSIS with KP10 = 865.0 +/- 23.8 pgm/min; +/- SEM) with an EC50 of ~5-10 μM. At saturating doses, KP10 (100 μm) and GLP-1 (100 nM) had similar effects on GSIS. Importantly, in combination, they had an additive effect (GLP-1 = 612.5 +/- 25.0, GLP-1 + KP-10 = 739.8 +/- 70.0 pgm/min) consistent with activation of independent downstream signaling pathways. GLP-1 increased cAMP production (165.0 +/- 17.4% over control), whereas KP-10 had no effect. Neither GLP-1 nor KP-10 altered intracellular Ca2+ levels at basal or activating glucose concentrations. Conversely, the addition of KP-10 enhanced glucose-stimulated oxygen consumption (% change over baseline O_2 consumption= 221.2 +/- 44.2%) from INS 832/3 pseudo-islets (Hart et al. Insulinoma-derived pseudo-islets for diabetes research. Am. J. Physio. 321, C247-C256, 2021) which was correlated with a sustained increase in mitochondrial NADH fluorescence. Our findings indicate that KP modulation of mitochondrial metabolic state is related to its ability to potentiate GSIS. Moreover, the KP induced potentiation is synergistic with that promoted by GLP-1 indicating the potential for targeting the KP activated metabolic pathway to further enhance GLP-1 therapeutic effectiveness.

Funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (2-SRA-2018-685-S-B), and Procyon Technologies LLC

This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.