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.
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