Natural regulatory mechanisms of insulin degradation by insulin degrading enzyme.

Insulin-degrading enzyme (IDE) accounts for most of the insulin degrading activity in extracts of several tissues and plays an important role in the intracellular degradation of insulin. Using newly developed sandwich radioimmunoassay for rat IDE, this enzyme was detectable in all tissues we examined and liver had the highest level of IDE. The ratio of insulin degrading activity to IDE concentration was roughly the same in liver, brain and muscle, however, twice as high in kidney as compared with other tissues. On the contrary, its degrading activity in these tissue extracts, including kidney, was completely lost after immunoprecipitation of IDE. These results suggest that IDE degrades insulin in the initial step of cleavage and that there are some mechanisms to regulate insulin degrading activity by IDE in the tissues.