Seeing It With Your Own Eyes

Welcome to Inside the Breakthrough – I’m Dan Riskin.
This is episode 10 and it’s going to be a little bit different… We’ve been following the researchers at SciMar for the last 9 episodes… well, today is a big day in their lab.

They’ve been studying a hormone called HISS – that’s “hepatic insulin-sensitizing substance.” It comes from the liver and if you have type 2 diabetes… or if you’re at risk of getting it… it might save your life. You see, SciMar is working to demonstrate that increased levels of HISS can turn someone from being “insulin resistant,” to “insulin sensitive.” – meaning that their body would be managing their blood sugar levels the way it should.

But here’s the problem…. the hormone has been studied for over 30 years, but until now, they haven’t actually seen it.

They’ve seen the physiological reaction it generates…
But they haven’t yet directly observed the difference HISS makes at the cellular level.

But that work is happening right now in the SciMar lab.

We’re going to check in on that later…but first, I want to take you South… really, really, far South.
Basically, as far south as you can go.

Each morning for 99 days straight… five men crawl out of a tiny tent that they share… they load their gear on the sleds… hitch up their dogs… and make their way across the frozen plains of Antarctica.

A great sheet of ice hundreds of miles square and in places, thousands of feet thick.

Those measurements are off by a little bit – but hey those old newsreels did the best they could. So let’s give them a break.

Huddled on a rocky oasis the party surveys a vast desert of snow and ice.

The expedition is being led by Roald Amundsen. Today he’s recognized as the most successful polar explorer of all time. Even back then, in 1911, he was already famous: A few years earlier, he had navigated the northwest passage… he was the first person ever to do that.

But that was a sailing trip…. this is different. This is an overland trek of almost 2000 miles.

Scarring the face of the glacier are yawning crevasses. Ruptures in the ice caused by tensions far below its surface that sometimes stretch hundreds of feet in length and plunge to the very bottom of the great white blanket.

He’s headed for the most remote spot on the planet … a place no human has ever reached…. The south pole.

But that’s not what he told his sponsors… it’s also not what he told his crew.

Amundsen set sail from Norway with the expressed intention of reaching the geographic North Pole.

Two other expeditions had already claimed to reach that spot… and they were arguing about which one was first… a lot of people believed neither of them had actually done it!

Well with all that uncertainty…. Amundsen decided not to join the fray… he made a different plan. The opposite plan. But he didn’t tell his crew until they were at sea.

“Men, Change of plans… we’re going to Antarctica.”

It’s hard to imagine what went through their minds.

Amundsen had kept his destination a secret for two reasons. One was for fear that the sponsors would bail on him… And second, that his competition would get wind of his intentions.

You see… he wasn’t the only person headed for the South Pole …there was also a British expedition headed by Robert Falcon Scott.

It took Amundsen and his crew four months to sail from Norway to the Bay of Whales, in Antarctica.
They built a camp and spent the next month catching seals and storing their meat.
They made what are called “depot journeys” – they would head towards the pole… and leave piles of supplies along the way… Frozen seal meat, oil for their cooking stoves. They left these supply depots along their route to reduce the amount they would have to carry when they eventually did make their run for the pole.

By now it was autumn in the southern hemisphere and the days were getting shorter. Ice would soon build up, endangering their ship. So half the crew sailed away… leaving just nine men alone on the ice.
They spent four months in their hand-built hut… all of it in darkness. Waiting for the spring and their assault on history.

In September…. the southern spring … they loaded up their gear, harnessed their dogs, and headed out.

They made about 15 miles a day…
But the sun was only up for about 8 hours a day at that point… and the temperatures were brutal: minus 69 degrees fahrenheit, and if you are a celsius person: minus 56. Either way, freezing.

The dogs feet were getting frostbitten and the humans, they weren’t doing much better.

After four days, they realized they had left too early… so they went back to camp.

Amundsen revised the plans.

He reduced the expedition crew to five men so they would need less food… Four of them would have to stay behind.
And he delayed their start for five more weeks… they would leave in October.

Now, if you’ve never visited, you might imagine Antarctica is just one big mass of flatness. But that’s not what it is at all. Their route covered three distinct sections:

First, they crossed the barrier ice shelf… That’s the ice that isn’t technically even on land. It’s the ice over top of the ocean at the coast. As they went they checked on their supply stashes… and it all went well.

The second section was climbing the escarpment. This is really the shoreline of the Antarctic continent… No human had ever passed this way before… they were drawing the map as they went. They found passes between mountain peaks and after thirty days travel… they reached the final stage — the Antarctic plateau.

Their next act was grizzly, but necessary… they had 45 dogs with them… but the sleds were lighter now and they were low on food. So they killed half the dogs… They skinned them, and preserved the meat. They used that meat to feed themselves and the remaining dogs the rest of the way.

This wasn’t a desperate act that they just thought of when they got there. It was all part of the plan.
In fact this plan is one of the reasons Amundsen chose to use dogs over motorized sleds like the British team would be using.

They left half of that meat in a new depot at the top of the escarpment… and headed out across the plateau, aiming straight for the South Pole.

Finally, on December 14th, 1911, Amundson and his men reached the pole.
They checked and double checked their location to be certain that there was no error.
They even walked out and back for a couple miles in each direction… just figuring that by doing that, even if their measurements were off by a tiny bit, one of them would have hopefully crossed over the pole by accident.
They erected a tent on the pole and topped it with a Norwegian flag. Inside, they left a note for Robert Falcon Scott – the leader of the British expedition who they assumed would be the next one there.

The note established their claim as the first to reach the pole.

Then, they turned around and headed back to the coast as quickly as they could. Because there was one last race to win.

So, ask yourself… when Amundsen planted the flag on the pole… What was he really doing? What had he really accomplished?

He didn’t ‘invent’ the South Pole…. He didn’t really ‘discover’ the south pole… Everyone knew where it was.

But his team was the first to see it with their own eyes. They were the first to breathe the cold air there, and run their gloved fingers through the snow.

I’m Dan Riskin – and this is “Inside the Breakthrough – How Science Comes to Life” – an original podcast by SciMar.

SciMar is also on an expedition of sorts… not a geographic one… a medical one. But it’s similar to Amundson’s in one respect.

Their ‘south pole’ is a hormone called HISS – that “hepatic insulin-sensitizing Substance” I mentioned earlier.
They know it exists… they know where it is… but they still haven’t yet run their fingers through the snow.

They’re hopeful that is about to happen.
But before we get to that – a story… about a story.

One of the most important books in the history of English literature is Moby Dick.
It’s a big book…. I mean really big. It’s more than 200,000 words long.

Scholars of literature will tell you it’s the story of a man (Ahab) and his quest. But for me, it’s all about the whale.

Moby Dick was a Sperm Whale – and there are three things everyone should know about Sperm Whales:
1. They have teeth – they don’t suck plankton through baleen like a Blue Whale does… They bite their prey.
2. They dive really, really really deep.
And 3. they often have scars on them – deep, brutal-looking gashes on their heads. For centuries, whalers commented on them, … but no one knew where those scars came from.

And so, the legends grew – people spun tales of a nightmarish creature that lived in the darkest depths of the sea… something so powerful, so vicious, it could attack a sperm whale head on.
An adult male by the way, is like 60 feet long and weighs something like 80 tons. So, whatever it was, it had to be fearless.

Sailors love to tell stories. And when they told stories about this beast from the deep, they gave it a name: The Kraken.

It comes from the Swedish word “Krake” which means “an unhealthy animal” or “something twisted.”

What they described was a monstrous, carnivorous, squid. Something with long powerful tentacles… Strong enough to grab your ship and haul it down beneath the waves.

That was a good enough answer for sailors… it was a great tale for scaring little kids … and it was perfect for impressing the ladies while on shore leave… but you know who it wasn’t a good enough answer for? The scientists who really wanted to know, “what is causing those scars on Sperm Whales?”

Figuring out the ‘what’ is really hard because of the ‘where’ – as in “where” all of this is happening.

I mentioned Sperm Whales dive deep. Well…
At 1000 feet down, there is no light… the sun doesn’t penetrate the water that far.
At 3000 feet, the water pressure is about 100 times what you experience at the surface.
Sperm Whales are thought to regularly go to 7000 feet.

Researchers figured that out by putting tracking tags on whales. Early versions of the tags would measure temperature and depth. They would detach from the animal and float to the surface so researchers could pick them up.

In the 1980’s satellite technology came along, and we could start tracking their location.
Eventually, cameras were attached, and we got our first video from the ‘dark zone.’
But still, no one could definitively say what was causing those scars.

So, they turned back to those old sailor yarns… and a key detail that was often overlooked.
The whalers of the 18th and 19th centuries used to talk about what they found inside whales’ stomachs.
It often included “Beaks” – not birds’ beaks… things that looked like squid beaks… but way bigger than any squid anyone had ever seen.

A theory was developed that there must be enormous squids… living in the cold darkness … miles below the surface.

They extrapolated from the size of the beaks… and figured if the beaks are ‘this’ big…. And if the proportions are the same as the squid we know about… then that means the tentacles must be massive: 10 maybe even 20 feet long!

They lined up their hypothetical squids with the pattern and locations of the scars on whales and this brought them to an incredible conclusion:
The whales weren’t being attacked… The whales were attacking squid… and the squid were fighting for their lives. They would flail about with their tentacles which had sharp hooks on them, and maybe try to gouge out the whales’ eyes.

It’s hard to say who usually won those confrontations, but one thing was for sure … epic battles were being waged in the depths. Battles far more interesting than even the ones sailors were making up.

This creature got a name – no, it wasn’t ‘Kraken’ – its name was the “Colossal Squid.”

Once they were looking for it, researchers started finding half-digested bits of squid in whale’s stomachs… and the occasional oversized tentacle showed up in a fisherman’s net… Eventually the picture started to fill in… Where it lived, what it ate…

But still, no one had ever seen a full living specimen.

It’s 2007.
A fishing boat called the ‘San Aspiring’ from New Zealand is long lining off Antarctica.
That means that they’re trailing multiple lines behind the boat … each one of them with like 20-thousand hooks on them.
They’re hoping to pull up Patagonian Toothfish. (Now, that doesn’t sound like a very yummy fish does it? That’s why your restaurant calls it Chilean Sea-Bass… but you know the truth. It’s Patagonian Toothfish)

Anyway, Toothfish are big… they’re like 15 to 20 pounds each… so as each one comes to the surface… a guy with a long pole and a spike on the end reaches over and hooks the fish to pull it onto the boat.
It’s hard work, and its repetitive work. All day long, you lean over the rail, you snare a big grey fish and pull it up on deck.
But on this day in 2007 that fisherman got the surprise of his life.
The line had dragged up… a Colossal Squid.

It was 40 feet long… weighed 500 pounds… it had an enormous pink squishy body… muscular arms with suckers that ended in hooks… and a giant, razor-sharp beak.

I’ve seen the video and you can hear one of the crew saying “Watch that mouth, it’ll eat you alive, that one.”

He sounds scared. The fear was real… because this is a monster from the deep, this thing is still alive.

After centuries of stories… and decades of research… this was the first ever sighting of a live specimen. Finally, what had always been theorized… was right in front of their eyes.

Isn’t it funny how much emphasis we put on those moments… reaching the pole, catching a colossal squid…. or even when Sir Edmond Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the top of Mount Everest…. Sure it’s a big day – but the mountain has always been there… it didn’t become the tallest mountain in the world that day… but that is the day someone finally saw the summit with their own eyes.

Well, right now, if we use that Everest analogy… Dr Wayne Lautt and the team at SciMar are somewhere above basecamp four… making the final ascent.

We’ve been able to demonstrate it’s doing exactly what our hypothesis stated that it was supposed to do.

“It” is a hormone from the liver that can make your body more sensitive to insulin… that is the opposite of type 2 diabetes… a disease where your body is more resistant to insulin.
To be blunt… this hormone could make you “un-diabetic.”

They’ve called it HISS – hepatic insulin-sensitizing substance.

We knew HISS existed many years ago in the Lautt Lab

That’s Dr Victoria Sid. She’s a researcher in the SciMar Lab. And yes, the team “knew it existed” a while ago — But in medicine, you still have to prove that it does what you think it will, even after you find it.

We know that HISS exists, but we want to confirm the site of action, one of them being the muscle cells. So, being able to culture the muscle cells, we can specifically see if HISS is actively causing this glucose uptake in the muscle cells. So, that’s one of the major things that we are trying to see with the cell culture platform.

“Cell cultures” are tiny amounts of muscle cells in little vials.
They add in glucose, insulin, and then one of two different blood samples.

We are basically taking blood samples that we know that HISS is present and HISS is not present in certain samples and we are trying to detect for the differences in the activity in those two samples.

The activity they are looking for is “do the muscle cells take glucose out of the blood? And if so, how much?”

Because being able to chemically identify without showing its activity is useless.

If you’ve seen any news story about research in a lab and they show that device where a bunch of vials are all arranged in a grid, and a thing moves over the top with a row of pipettes that delivers some substance to all of them… that’s called a bioassay — and that’s what they’re using to do this experiment dozens of times, all at once.

In order to measure the glucose uptake response in the cells, we have to adapt several different types of bioassays. So, after culturing the cells in these little 96 well plates, you’re able to treat the cells with these samples that we know contains HISS or does not contain HISS and look into the differences of activity by measuring the absorbance of the glucose uptake activity.

The results were strong, clear, and repeatable.
When insulin alone was present, the muscles took up some glucose, but not a lot.

The glucose uptake response was half the amount compared to when insulin and HISS were both present.

So the presence of HISS doubled the glucose uptake.

…and being able to see that there is a difference, meaning that HISS in the other sample is actually playing a role because when it is absent, the activity is different.

It’s an enormous step forward. A step toward tackling the global type 2 diabetes epidemic.

we’re able to have a bioassay which can measure HISS activity.

Because SciMar has now shown in the lab that HISS has a direct impact on how nutrient energy is used, they now have a novel way to measure and assess human metabolism. It’s a way to look at diabetes that is totally different from what we’ve done for the past century.

As the human blood that SciMar has collected in trials is processed, they’ll publish their results in peer-reviewed scientific journals. With these results, they have cleared a path forward to developing entirely new medicines to detect, prevent, treat, and ultimately reverse type 2 diabetes.
And that means they can now measure the mechanism behind “nutrient partitioning” — why some glucose is stored in muscle and some is stored in fat.

we are introducing a paradigm shift.

It took 30 years…. But there it is … a giant squid on the deck… running your fingers through the snow at the pole… or reaching the summit.

But enough from me… The last word on this should come from the person who started it all… Dr Wayne Lautt.

What’s exciting about this is that this is the validation of an entirely new paradigm that looks at the cause, the prevention, the diagnosis of type two diabetes. It adds a whole layer of new science that can be done. New things that we now understand that now fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

So that’s a really very significant milestone for us.

It’s gone from fancy to fact, it’s gone from theory to application.

It’s real. It can be no denying of it. And now the issue is moving forward, bringing this into people’s health.

So I’m really, really anxious to get on with the next clinical trials that are going to let us demonstrate more fully in the field, in the health of people that this works.

So that’s it…
For season one I mean – not for SciMar…

They have a lot of work still to do, and so do we. We’re already working on season two… which will have more stories from history – and more stories about SciMar and what they are up to as they go from publishing their findings, to creating a product, getting it to market, and ultimately conquering the epidemic of type 2 diabetes.

So let’s reflect on that.
We’ve been through a lot together.
We’ve run naked in the streets, we’ve undiscovered the planet Vulcan, and we’ve brought up the Kraken. It has been a good trip.

If you have a friend that likes good stories, do them a favour – and us – let them in on the secret.

I’m Dan Riskin. Thanks for joining me on this, and every episode of “Inside the Breakthrough – How Science Comes to life.”

One last thing …

I mentioned that after reaching the pole, Amundson had ‘one more race to win.’ You remember that?

You see, even though they were the first to reach the bottom of the earth… that wasn’t going to mean very much if they weren’t able to tell anyone.

Fortunately for them, by the time they got back to the coast, their crew had returned with the ship. So they boarded. They sailed to Australia, and from there they sent a telegraph, to tell the world.

The fishermen that caught the first living Colossal Squid? … They told the world by uploading their video to youtube.

And SciMar – well, they chose to share their discovery this way – with a podcast.
I hope you’ve enjoyed it.
If you want to get more details on HISS and how they found it… check em’ out SciMar.ca
That’s S-C-I M-A-R dot C-A

Welcome to Inside the Breakthrough – I’m Dan Riskin.

This is episode 10 and it’s going to be a little bit different… We’ve been following the researchers at SciMar for the last 9 episodes… well, today is a big day in their lab.

They’ve been studying a hormone called HISS – that’s “hepatic insulin-sensitizing substance.” It comes from the liver and if you have type 2 diabetes… or if you’re at risk of getting it… it might save your life. You see, SciMar is working to demonstrate that increased levels of HISS can turn someone from being “insulin resistant,” to “insulin sensitive.” – meaning that their body would be managing their blood sugar levels the way it should.

But here’s the problem…. the hormone has been studied for over 30 years, but until now, they haven’t actually seen it.

They’ve seen the physiological reaction it generates…

But they haven’t yet directly observed the difference HISS makes at the cellular level.

But that work is happening right now in the SciMar lab.

We’re going to check in on that later…but first, I want to take you South… really, really, far South.

Basically, as far south as you can go.

Each morning for 99 days straight… five men crawl out of a tiny tent that they share… they load their gear on the sleds… hitch up their dogs… and make their way across the frozen plains of Antarctica.

A great sheet of ice hundreds of miles square and in places, thousands of feet thick.

Those measurements are off by a little bit – but hey those old newsreels did the best they could. So let’s give them a break.

Huddled on a rocky oasis the party surveys a vast desert of snow and ice.

The expedition is being led by Roald Amundsen. Today he’s recognized as the most successful polar explorer of all time. Even back then, in 1911, he was already famous: A few years earlier, he had navigated the northwest passage… he was the first person ever to do that.

But that was a sailing trip…. this is different. This is an overland trek of almost 2000 miles.

Scarring the face of the glacier are yawning crevasses. Ruptures in the ice caused by tensions far below its surface that sometimes stretch hundreds of feet in length and plunge to the very bottom of the great white blanket.

He’s headed for the most remote spot on the planet … a place no human has ever reached…. The south pole.

But that’s not what he told his sponsors… it’s also not what he told his crew.

Amundsen set sail from Norway with the expressed intention of reaching the geographic North Pole.

Two other expeditions had already claimed to reach that spot… and they were arguing about which one was first… a lot of people believed neither of them had actually done it!

Well with all that uncertainty…. Amundsen decided not to join the fray… he made a different plan. The opposite plan. But he didn’t tell his crew until they were at sea.

“Men, Change of plans… we’re going to Antarctica.”

It’s hard to imagine what went through their minds.

Amundsen had kept his destination a secret for two reasons. One was for fear that the sponsors would bail on him… And second, that his competition would get wind of his intentions.

You see… he wasn’t the only person headed for the South Pole …there was also a British expedition headed by Robert Falcon Scott.

It took Amundsen and his crew four months to sail from Norway to the Bay of Whales, in Antarctica.

They built a camp and spent the next month catching seals and storing their meat.

They made what are called “depot journeys” – they would head towards the pole… and leave piles of supplies along the way… Frozen seal meat, oil for their cooking stoves. They left these supply depots along their route to reduce the amount they would have to carry when they eventually did make their run for the pole.

By now it was autumn in the southern hemisphere and the days were getting shorter. Ice would soon build up, endangering their ship. So half the crew sailed away… leaving just nine men alone on the ice.

They spent four months in their hand-built hut… all of it in darkness. Waiting for the spring and their assault on history.

In September…. the southern spring … they loaded up their gear, harnessed their dogs, and headed out.

They made about 15 miles a day…

But the sun was only up for about 8 hours a day at that point… and the temperatures were brutal: minus 69 degrees fahrenheit, and if you are a celsius person: minus 56. Either way, freezing.

The dogs feet were getting frostbitten and the humans, they weren’t doing much better.

After four days, they realized they had left too early… so they went back to camp.

Amundsen revised the plans.

He reduced the expedition crew to five men so they would need less food… Four of them would have to stay behind.

And he delayed their start for five more weeks… they would leave in October.

Now, if you’ve never visited, you might imagine Antarctica is just one big mass of flatness. But that’s not what it is at all. Their route covered three distinct sections:

First, they crossed the barrier ice shelf… That’s the ice that isn’t technically even on land. It’s the ice over top of the ocean at the coast. As they went they checked on their supply stashes… and it all went well.

The second section was climbing the escarpment. This is really the shoreline of the Antarctic continent… No human had ever passed this way before… they were drawing the map as they went. They found passes between mountain peaks and after thirty days travel… they reached the final stage — the Antarctic plateau.

Their next act was grizzly, but necessary… they had 45 dogs with them… but the sleds were lighter now and they were low on food. So they killed half the dogs… They skinned them, and preserved the meat. They used that meat to feed themselves and the remaining dogs the rest of the way.

This wasn’t a desperate act that they just thought of when they got there. It was all part of the plan.

In fact this plan is one of the reasons Amundsen chose to use dogs over motorized sleds like the British team would be using.

They left half of that meat in a new depot at the top of the escarpment… and headed out across the plateau, aiming straight for the South Pole.

Finally, on December 14th, 1911, Amundson and his men reached the pole.

They checked and double checked their location to be certain that there was no error.

They even walked out and back for a couple miles in each direction… just figuring that by doing that, even if their measurements were off by a tiny bit, one of them would have hopefully crossed over the pole by accident.

They erected a tent on the pole and topped it with a Norwegian flag. Inside, they left a note for Robert Falcon Scott – the leader of the British expedition who they assumed would be the next one there.

The note established their claim as the first to reach the pole.

Then, they turned around and headed back to the coast as quickly as they could. Because there was one last race to win.

So, ask yourself… when Amundsen planted the flag on the pole… What was he really doing? What had he really accomplished?

He didn’t ‘invent’ the South Pole…. He didn’t really ‘discover’ the south pole… Everyone knew where it was.

But his team was the first to see it with their own eyes. They were the first to breathe the cold air there, and run their gloved fingers through the snow.

I’m Dan Riskin – and this is “Inside the Breakthrough – How Science Comes to Life” – an original podcast by SciMar.

SciMar is also on an expedition of sorts… not a geographic one… a medical one. But it’s similar to Amundson’s in one respect.

Their ‘south pole’ is a hormone called HISS – that “hepatic insulin-sensitizing Substance” I mentioned earlier.

They know it exists… they know where it is… but they still haven’t yet run their fingers through the snow.

They’re hopeful that is about to happen.

But before we get to that – a story… about a story.

One of the most important books in the history of English literature is Moby Dick.

It’s a big book…. I mean really big. It’s more than 200,000 words long.

Scholars of literature will tell you it’s the story of a man (Ahab) and his quest. But for me, it’s all about the whale.

Moby Dick was a Sperm Whale – and there are three things everyone should know about Sperm Whales:

1. They have teeth – they don’t suck plankton through baleen like a Blue Whale does… They bite their prey.
2. They dive really, really really deep.

And 3. they often have scars on them – deep, brutal-looking gashes on their heads. For centuries, whalers commented on them, … but no one knew where those scars came from.

And so, the legends grew – people spun tales of a nightmarish creature that lived in the darkest depths of the sea… something so powerful, so vicious, it could attack a sperm whale head on.

An adult male by the way, is like 60 feet long and weighs something like 80 tons. So, whatever it was, it had to be fearless.

Sailors love to tell stories. And when they told stories about this beast from the deep, they gave it a name: The Kraken.

It comes from the Swedish word “Krake” which means “an unhealthy animal” or “something twisted.”

What they described was a monstrous, carnivorous, squid. Something with long powerful tentacles… Strong enough to grab your ship and haul it down beneath the waves.

That was a good enough answer for sailors… it was a great tale for scaring little kids … and it was perfect for impressing the ladies while on shore leave… but you know who it wasn’t a good enough answer for? The scientists who really wanted to know, “what is causing those scars on Sperm Whales?”

Figuring out the ‘what’ is really hard because of the ‘where’ – as in “where” all of this is happening.

I mentioned Sperm Whales dive deep. Well…

At 1000 feet down, there is no light… the sun doesn’t penetrate the water that far.

At 3000 feet, the water pressure is about 100 times what you experience at the surface.

Sperm Whales are thought to regularly go to 7000 feet.

Researchers figured that out by putting tracking tags on whales. Early versions of the tags would measure temperature and depth. They would detach from the animal and float to the surface so researchers could pick them up.

In the 1980’s satellite technology came along, and we could start tracking their location.

Eventually, cameras were attached, and we got our first video from the ‘dark zone.’

But still, no one could definitively say what was causing those scars.

So, they turned back to those old sailor yarns… and a key detail that was often overlooked.

The whalers of the 18th and 19th centuries used to talk about what they found inside whales’ stomachs.

It often included “Beaks” – not birds’ beaks… things that looked like squid beaks… but way bigger than any squid anyone had ever seen.

A theory was developed that there must be enormous squids… living in the cold darkness … miles below the surface.

They extrapolated from the size of the beaks… and figured if the beaks are ‘this’ big…. And if the proportions are the same as the squid we know about… then that means the tentacles must be massive: 10 maybe even 20 feet long!

They lined up their hypothetical squids with the pattern and locations of the scars on whales and this brought them to an incredible conclusion:

The whales weren’t being attacked… The whales were attacking squid… and the squid were fighting for their lives. They would flail about with their tentacles which had sharp hooks on them, and maybe try to gouge out the whales’ eyes.

It’s hard to say who usually won those confrontations, but one thing was for sure … epic battles were being waged in the depths. Battles far more interesting than even the ones sailors were making up.

This creature got a name – no, it wasn’t ‘Kraken’ – its name was the “Colossal Squid.”

Once they were looking for it, researchers started finding half-digested bits of squid in whale’s stomachs… and the occasional oversized tentacle showed up in a fisherman’s net… Eventually the picture started to fill in… Where it lived, what it ate…

But still, no one had ever seen a full living specimen.

It’s 2007.

A fishing boat called the ‘San Aspiring’ from New Zealand is long lining off Antarctica.

That means that they’re trailing multiple lines behind the boat … each one of them with like 20-thousand hooks on them.

They’re hoping to pull up Patagonian Toothfish. (Now, that doesn’t sound like a very yummy fish does it? That’s why your restaurant calls it Chilean Sea-Bass… but you know the truth. It’s Patagonian Toothfish)

Anyway, Toothfish are big… they’re like 15 to 20 pounds each… so as each one comes to the surface… a guy with a long pole and a spike on the end reaches over and hooks the fish to pull it onto the boat.

It’s hard work, and its repetitive work. All day long, you lean over the rail, you snare a big grey fish and pull it up on deck.

But on this day in 2007 that fisherman got the surprise of his life.

The line had dragged up… a Colossal Squid.

It was 40 feet long… weighed 500 pounds… it had an enormous pink squishy body… muscular arms with suckers that ended in hooks… and a giant, razor-sharp beak.

I’ve seen the video and you can hear one of the crew saying “Watch that mouth, it’ll eat you alive, that one.”

He sounds scared. The fear was real… because this is a monster from the deep, this thing is still alive.

After centuries of stories… and decades of research… this was the first ever sighting of a live specimen. Finally, what had always been theorized… was right in front of their eyes.

Isn’t it funny how much emphasis we put on those moments… reaching the pole, catching a colossal squid…. or even when Sir Edmond Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the top of Mount Everest…. Sure it’s a big day – but the mountain has always been there… it didn’t become the tallest mountain in the world that day… but that is the day someone finally saw the summit with their own eyes.

Well, right now, if we use that Everest analogy… Dr Wayne Lautt and the team at SciMar are somewhere above basecamp four… making the final ascent.

We’ve been able to demonstrate it’s doing exactly what our hypothesis stated that it was supposed to do.

“It” is a hormone from the liver that can make your body more sensitive to insulin… that is the opposite of type 2 diabetes… a disease where your body is more resistant to insulin.

To be blunt… this hormone could make you “un-diabetic.”

They’ve called it HISS – hepatic insulin-sensitizing substance.

We knew HISS existed many years ago in the Lautt Lab

That’s Dr Victoria Sid. She’s a researcher in the SciMar Lab. And yes, the team “knew it existed” a while ago — But in medicine, you still have to prove that it does what you think it will, even after you find it.

We know that HISS exists, but we want to confirm the site of action, one of them being the muscle cells. So, being able to culture the muscle cells, we can specifically see if HISS is actively causing this glucose uptake in the muscle cells. So, that’s one of the major things that we are trying to see with the cell culture platform.

“Cell cultures” are tiny amounts of muscle cells in little vials.

They add in glucose, insulin, and then one of two different blood samples.

We are basically taking blood samples that we know that HISS is present and HISS is not present in certain samples and we are trying to detect for the differences in the activity in those two samples.

The activity they are looking for is “do the muscle cells take glucose out of the blood? And if so, how much?”

Because being able to chemically identify without showing its activity is useless.

If you’ve seen any news story about research in a lab and they show that device where a bunch of vials are all arranged in a grid, and a thing moves over the top with a row of pipettes that delivers some substance to all of them… that’s called a bioassay — and that’s what they’re using to do this experiment dozens of times, all at once.

In order to measure the glucose uptake response in the cells, we have to adapt several different types of bioassays. So, after culturing the cells in these little 96 well plates, you’re able to treat the cells with these samples that we know contains HISS or does not contain HISS and look into the differences of activity by measuring the absorbance of the glucose uptake activity.

The results were strong, clear, and repeatable.

When insulin alone was present, the muscles took up some glucose, but not a lot.

The glucose uptake response was half the amount compared to when insulin and HISS were both present.

So the presence of HISS doubled the glucose uptake.

…and being able to see that there is a difference, meaning that HISS in the other sample is actually playing a role because when it is absent, the activity is different.

It’s an enormous step forward. A step toward tackling the global type 2 diabetes epidemic.

We’re able to have a bioassay which can measure HISS activity.

Because SciMar has now shown in the lab that HISS has a direct impact on how nutrient energy is used, they now have a novel way to measure and assess human metabolism. It’s a way to look at diabetes that is totally different from what we’ve done for the past century.

As the human blood that SciMar has collected in trials is processed, they’ll publish their results in peer-reviewed scientific journals. With these results, they have cleared a path forward to developing entirely new medicines to detect, prevent, treat, and ultimately reverse type 2 diabetes.

And that means they can now measure the mechanism behind “nutrient partitioning” — why some glucose is stored in muscle and some is stored in fat.

we are introducing a paradigm shift.

It took 30 years…. But there it is … a giant squid on the deck… running your fingers through the snow at the pole… or reaching the summit.

But enough from me… The last word on this should come from the person who started it all… Dr Wayne Lautt.

What’s exciting about this is that this is the validation of an entirely new paradigm that looks at the cause, the prevention, the diagnosis of type two diabetes. It adds a whole layer of new science that can be done. New things that we now understand that now fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

So that’s a really very significant milestone for us.

It’s gone from fancy to fact, it’s gone from theory to application.

It’s real. It can be no denying of it. And now the issue is moving forward, bringing this into people’s health.

So I’m really, really anxious to get on with the next clinical trials that are going to let us demonstrate more fully in the field, in the health of people that this works.

So that’s it…

For season one I mean – not for SciMar…

They have a lot of work still to do, and so do we. We’re already working on season two… which will have more stories from history – and more stories about SciMar and what they are up to as they go from publishing their findings, to creating a product, getting it to market, and ultimately conquering the epidemic of type 2 diabetes.

So let’s reflect on that.

We’ve been through a lot together.

We’ve run naked in the streets, we’ve undiscovered the planet Vulcan, and we’ve brought up the Kraken. It has been a good trip.

If you have a friend that likes good stories, do them a favour – and us –  let them in on the secret.

I’m Dan Riskin. Thanks for joining me on this, and every episode of “Inside the Breakthrough – How Science Comes to life.”

One last thing …

I mentioned that after reaching the pole, Amundson had ‘one more race to win.’ You remember that?

You see, even though they were the first to reach the bottom of the earth… that wasn’t going to mean very much if they weren’t able to tell anyone.

Fortunately for them, by the time they got back to the coast, their crew had returned with the ship. So they boarded. They sailed to Australia, and from there they sent a telegraph, to tell the world.

The fishermen that caught the first living Colossal Squid? … They told the world by uploading their video to youtube.

And SciMar – well, they chose to share their discovery this way – with a podcast.

I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

If you want to get more details on HISS and how they found it… check em’ out SciMar.ca

That’s S-C-I  M-A-R dot C-A