CURE RESEARCH ACCELERATES

An infusion of new funding from the Diabetes Institutes Foundation and biotechnology company Global Medical Products is helping the Strelitz Diabetes Institutes accelerate its islet cell regeneration and INGAP research towards a cure for diabetes.

In March of this year, Global Medical Products and Eastern Virginia Medical School announced the biotech company's $6 million dollar funding over five years for the Institutes' islet cell regeneration research work towards developing a drug to reverse diabetes.

Dr. Aaron I. Vinik, Director of Research for the Strelitz Diabetes Research Institute, explained how GMP funds have boosted SDRI research, "The launching of Global Medical Products' Manhattan Project for INGAP research has provided the opportunity for the SDRI to recruit valuable new members to our scientific team and accelerate both research towards a therapeutic agent to cure diabetes and our basic science research.With experience in gene research, these scientists will help Eastern Virginia Medical School establish a transgenic facility for research involving gene transference and the activation or inactivation of genes in animal models."

The Research Institute has hired six new scientists to work in its protein and cell and molecular biology laboratories.  Joining the protein chemistry laboratory to work with Dr. Gary Pittenger is Dr. Robert Johns, a recent PhD graduate from Old Dominion University, who isolated the sequence of a very important protein in ticks that allows for perpetuation of diseases.  New scientists working under Dr. David Taylor-Fishwick's direction in the cell and molecular biology laboratories include Manas Ray, PhD, recruited from the University of Texas and his wife, Madhumita Ray, MS who joins the research team for work with confocal microscopy.  The SDRI has recruited Yong Chao, PhD from Virginia Commonwealth University and Hidayah Kendell, MS also from Old Dominion University.  Peter Walker, PhD joins the Research Institute to coordinate its many research projects.

Islet cell regeneration research with the gene INGAP is proceeding along two concurrent tracks.Along one track, work with Global Medical Products is targeted at the development of INGAP as a pharmaceutical agent. Current work is focused on using INGAP to create new islet cells in order to investigate their structure and function.In preliminary studies, it appears that INGAP produces completely normal islets creating insulin.These studies have been so promising that SDRI scientists hope to begin therapeutic human trials in the next several years.

Parallel to this, and sometimes dovetailing with it, is the Institutes' basic science research funded through the Diabetes Institutes Foundation.These investigations are primarily targeted at finding out what controls INGAP, and in turn, what INGAP itself controls.Scientists are investigating where INGAP binds to its receptor, and how the receptor is turned on and off.SDI scientists conjecture that someday the use of the gene INGAP may not be necessary because scientists may be able to develop a man-made agent that would activate the receptor and turn on the chain of events to create insulin.

Dr. Vinik explains the need for continued development of the basic science research with INGAP, "We may find that INGAP may be the cure for certain forms of diabetes but not for others.It may be that certain people with diabetes do not have a deficiency of INGAP but rather are resistant to it because of a defect in the receptor, signal transduction or pathways beyond.For example, if after the discovery of insulin it had been accepted that all diabetes was a deficiency of insulin, then nothing would have been done to develop the insulin sensitizers that are major therapeutic tools for the majority of people with diabetes (Type 2) today."

Current results in basic science research at the Institutes are leading the SDRI research team to believe that INGAP has the potential for reversing both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.They further expect that the research may eventually allow for the prediction and prevention of diabetes by screening people who are predisposed to have an INGAP deficiency.