Massive Multi-Ancestry Study Maps Tissue-Specific Drivers of Type 2 Diabetes

Published in Nature Metabolism, the analysis leverages data from over 2.5 million people to prioritize causal targets for future validation.

Overview

Researchers from UMass Amherst and Helmholtz Munich led an international effort that compared seven diabetes-relevant tissues across four ancestry groups to pinpoint causal genes and proteins.
The study identified 676 genes with causal evidence across key tissues, with only 18% detectable in blood and 85% of tissue effects absent from blood.
Blood-only analyses implicated 335 genes and 46 proteins in type 2 diabetes risk, underscoring the limits of relying on peripheral blood data.
The work draws on the Type 2 Diabetes Global Genomics Initiative’s GWAS resource covering more than 2.5 million participants, including over 700,000 of non-European ancestry, revealing shared and ancestry-specific signals.
The authors emphasize that findings are computational and outline next steps that include laboratory validation, broader tissue and protein sampling beyond European cohorts, and single-cell resolution studies.