TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

USF Secures Millions For Diabetes Study

ADVERTISEMENT

By ADAM EMERSON and CAROL GENTRY The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 4, 2007

TAMPA - A pediatrics professor at the University of South Florida scored a $169 million grant to scour the globe and study the causes of Type 1 diabetes.

USF President Judy Genshaft said Wednesday that it's the largest grant the university has ever received.

The National Institutes of Health recently awarded the contract to a USF team led by Professor Jeffrey Krischer, who last year made headlines after winning a $20.1 million NIH award to study the triggers of Type 1 diabetes.

'This shows we're really the leading global institution in the prevention of juvenile diabetes,' Genshaft said after her annual address to the university.

The scale of the study is ambitious, officials say. The $169 million award will be spent over 10 years, during which time Krischer and a team of clinicians will follow about 8,000 children who are at-risk of developing Type 1 diabetes, which some refer to as juvenile diabetes.

Currently, the team is screening about 361,000 newborns at six clinics in the United States and Europe. About half of the 8,000 babies at genetic risk or showing early signs in their blood have been enrolled, researchers said.

The goal is to enroll the rest by the end of 2009 and then follow them long enough to see whether they develop signs of immunity to the pancreas cells that make insulin.

Judith Fradkin, director of the Diabetes Division at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, said the 10-year grant continues a project that has been under way for several years. Krischer, an epidemiologist, heads the data coordinating center for the project, called TEDDY (an acronym for The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young).

As the coordinating center, USF receives data from the sites and assesses the quality, arranges shipments of specimens to NIH for testing, and keeps the money flowing out to investigators around the world.

'Florida is the glue that's holding all these centers together,' Fradkin said, referring to the USF researchers. 'They perform a pivotal function.'
Krischer said his team has about $30 million of the $169 million. Researchers will use the grant to study why some children have juvenile diabetes and why the incidence has doubled since the 1980s.

Only 10 percent of children who are at genetic risk for diabetes eventually develop the disease, Krischer said, so the team wants to determine what environmental factors trigger it.

Some of those factors may be dietary, some because of lifestyle. 'We are going to see how the body responds,' Krischer said.

Type I diabetes can occur at any age, but most commonly is diagnosed from infancy to the late 30s, according to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. In this type, a person's pancreas produces little or no insulin.

Type 2 diabetes typically develops in people older than 40, though it has recently appeared more frequently in children, according to the research foundation. In this form, the pancreas still produces insulin, but the body doesn't produce enough or is not able to use it effectively.

Incidence of Type I peaks twice, among toddlers and in adolescents. Even among the late-onset group, Fradkin said, '10 years will be enough to see differences in auto-immunity.'

As many as 3 million people in the United States have Type I diabetes, according to the research foundation. The American Diabetes Association says about one in every 400 to 600 children and adolescents has the disease.
Krischer was chosen to be data coordinator when the study began because of his long history as a study leader on prevention of Type 1 diabetes, Fradkin said. Krischer received $20.1 million in the 2005-06 fiscal year from the NIH to develop a center to crunch data identifying what triggers diabetes.

It was the ninth largest research grant the NIH awarded that year.

He is the data coordinator for an ongoing study on the effects of cow's milk on children at risk and headed a breakthrough study in the 1990s that described the stages of Type 1 diabetes and tested whether insulin might prevent the disease. The injections didn't work and the pills didn't work for a lot of children, but they seemed to reduce risk in a certain group. He's leading the followup.

'I would say he has an excellent track record,' Fradkin said.

Researcher Buddy Jaudon contributed to this report. Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at aemerson@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-8285, or Carol Gentry can be reached at (813) 259-7624 or cgentry@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT