UF to be part of national diabetes trial network

The National Institutes of Health has selected the University of Florida to be part of a 14-center nationwide network that will conduct studies of agents to prevent type 1 diabetes.

The NIH will award more than $2 million over the next seven years to Desmond Schatz, M.D., to establish and oversee a clinical trial center at UF as part of a group to be called TrialNet. Schatz, the principal investigator, is a professor in the College of Medicine’s department of pediatrics and medical director of the UF Diabetes Center.

Network institutions will work together to institute, design and carry out multiple trials using a variety of medications in diverse populations in an effort to find ways to prevent and delay progression of type 1 diabetes, which afflicts an estimated 1 million people in the United States.

The studies are expected to boost knowledge about the causes and development of the immune-system disorder, which occurs when the body’s infection-fighting white blood cells attack the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.

Schatz will work closely with other UF scientists Michael Clare-Salzler, M.D., an associate professor of pathology, immunology and laboratory medicine, who is co-principal investigator; Andrew Muir, M.D., clinical assistant professor, and Janet Silverstein, M.D., a professor and chief, both of the department of pediatrics’ division of endocrinology; and William Winter, M.D., professor, Jin-Xiong She, Ph.D., professor, and Mark Atkinson, Ph.D., professor, all in the department of pathology, immunology and laboratory medicine.

Type 1 diabetes is a chronic disease treated with daily injections of insulin to help regulate how the body uses and stores sugar and other nutrients. It often causes major complications, including damage to blood vessels, which can lead to heart disease, stroke, blindness and kidney failure.

“There’s a growing incidence of type 1 and type 2 diabetes, which causes significant morbidity and mortality,” Schatz said. “We’ve clearly got to stop it.”

The research is an extension of the nation’s first Diabetes Prevention Trial studies under way at UF and other institutions to determine whether insulin injections can be given to prevent type 1 diabetes in people at risk for developing it. Initial findings indicate that insulin injections do not work as a preventative measure, Schatz said, so other agents will be tested through TrialNet.

Researchers hope to begin clinical trials of new agents in the next six to 12 months. The study will involve relatives of people with diabetes who are at high risk of developing the disease, as well as individuals who are in its early stages.

Among the other institutions selected to be part of TrialNet are the University of Miami, Stanford University in California, University of California in San Francisco, the University of Colorado in Denver and the University of Washington in Seattle.