The HPA team plans to release a series of "Movie of the month" during 2020. These movies are based on the Human Protein Atlas program, including antibody-based 3D profiling of tissues using light sheet microscopy performed by Dr Csaba Adori at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm.

Today, a movie was published showing the location of the protein insulin in the pancreas. The islets of Langerhans are responsible for producing the protein insulin, regulating the blood sugar levels. When the production of insulin malfunctions, this leads to diabetes.

The movie describes the making and the results from the 3D imaging, with an interview of the HPA researcher Dr Cecilia Lindskog, Director of the Tissue Atlas. The location of insulin localized to the beta cells in islets of Langerhans, is visualized in green and the nerves surrounding the blood vessels are seen in red. "By imaging pancreas in 3D, we see that the nerve fibers form a fine network that surrounds the islets of Langerhans. We can also observe that the islets have different sizes, which is not easily seen in normal 2D histological sections. This gives important information for further research on diabetes, in order to find novel treatments for the disease", says Cecilia Lindskog.

Watch the Insulin movie and other educational movies at the HPA YouTube channel.