The Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International has awarded $7.5 million over five years to establish the JDF Center for Islet Transplantation at the University of Chicago/University of Minnesota.
The center will advance the use of transplants of insulin-producing islets as a cure for diabetes by seeking new ways to prevent the body from rejecting transplants without causing dangerous side effects. The center will be directed by Jeffrey Bluestone, PhD, of the University of Chicago, who also was named director of a $144 million collaborative project through which the diabetes foundation and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases plan to study immune tolerance (see related story).
The center, which will research and test tolerogenic therapies, "marks a new approach to fighting juvenile diabetes through islet transplants," said Dr. Bluestone.
Such therapies "are tremendously promising because they target only those specific immune cells responsible for rejecting the transplanted islets, while leaving other disease-fighting immune cells intact," said codirector Bernhard J. Hering, MD.
The diabetes foundation also said that it has provided $10 million to fund eight new centers to study replacement islets and to increase their supply and quality. Six of the centers will be in North America, and two will be in Europe.
For Your Information:
JDF news release:
www.jdf.org/pubinfo/chicago.html
background information, including principal investigators:
www.jdf.org/pubinfo/chicago1.html
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