Comparison of Gene Expression Profile Pattern in Human and Cynomolgus Monkey Leucocytes with T2DM

Type 2 diabetes mellitus(T2DM) is a multi-factorial metabolic disease.The aim of this study is to determine whether the gene expression profile(GEP) of cynomolgus monkey can represent the GEP of human diabetes with T2DM.The peripheral blood leucocytes were collected from seven human diabetes,seven cynomolgus monkeys with T2DM and fourteen healthy donors.The expression of 51 T2DM related genes was evaluated using quantitative real-time PCR.We found that 34 genes(66.7%) were significantly differentially expressed between diabetic monkeys and the normal controls(P0.05),including 24 genes were up-regulated in the monkey with T2DM.In the comparison of human disease samples and the controls,26 genes(50.1%) were identified significantly different(P0.05),of which 16 genes were up-regulated.The major functional categories of these genes are related to carbohydrate and lipid metabolism,and inflammatory.Interestingly,18 genes are commonly dysregulated in both human and cynomolgus monkeys with T2DM indicating that the cynomolgus monkey is an ideal animal model for human diabetes research.We conclude that the GEP of peripheral blood leukocyte can be used as early diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in both human and cynomolgus monkey with T2DM.