NIH renews UF’s diabetes program grant

University of Florida diabetes studies that focus on genetic factors associated with the disease will receive a boost from the National Institutes of Health, which has renewed its funding of select research projects under way at UF’s College of Medicine.

UF scientists will receive $5.6 million over the next five years to continue studies of how certain genes interact with the immune system to launch the body’s attack on its own insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, said Mark Atkinson, Ph.D., the Sebastian Family/American Diabetes Association professor for diabetes research. Atkinson also directs the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Gene Therapy Center for the Prevention of Diabetes and Its Complications at the University of Florida and the University of Miami.

The funds are earmarked for three projects, overseen by Atkinson and Desmond Schatz, M.D., a professor of pediatrics and medical director of the Diabetes Center of Excellence. In one study in mice, researchers will examine the mechanisms by which white blood cells known as B lymphocytes contribute to the development of type 1 diabetes.

In the second study, scientists will seek to identify the role abnormally high levels of a molecule known as prostaglandin synthase-2 play in the disorder. The third will involve monitoring markers of immune system activity that have been linked to susceptibility to and progression of the disease. Researchers associated with these latter two projects will study people who have type 1 diabetes or who are at risk for developing the disease, including those participating in a newborn diabetes screening program and in the national diabetes prevention trials also under way at UF.

UF experts say the research will help them better understand events critical to the natural history of type 1 diabetes, identify genetic and immunologic screening tools for the disease, and perhaps uncover ways to bolster the immune system to prevent the disorder.

Other key researchers, all affiliated with the UF Genetics Institute and the College of Medicine’s department of pathology, immunology and laboratory medicine, include Jin-Xiong She, Ph.D., a professor; Andrew Muir, M.D., a clinical assistant professor; and Michael J. Clare-Salzler, M.D., an associate professor.