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Newswise — The University of Michigan announced today that it will launch a new and comprehensive initiative aimed at accelerating the search for a cure for Type 1 diabetes.
The initiative will be enabled by a private donation of $44 million — the largest gift ever for the U-M Health System, and the second-largest gift in U-M history.
Says Allen S. Lichter, M.D., dean of the U-M Medical School, "This initiative will point toward a new and different paradigm for Type I diabetes research. It is one intended to accelerate the research process through the unprecedented use of systems analysis and modern information science, and fed by true interdisciplinary cooperation and sharing of research results in real time."
He adds, "The community of scientists at Michigan is fully prepared to take this step — not just those in medicine but in allied fields as well, stretching across the breadth and depth of this great University — for we need a frontal assault on this disease."
The donors are Bill and Dee Brehm of McLean, Virginia, whose motivation is both personal and philanthropic. In the 55 years since she was diagnosed with Type I diabetes, Dee Brehm has given herself more than 100,000 insulin injections. She has tested her blood over 60,000 times since home monitors became available. Those actions have kept her alive, and helped her fend off the life-threatening complications suffered by many others with the disease.
But Dee, and her husband Bill, want something more: They want the pace of the search for a cure to be accelerated.
After extensive discussions over four years with scientists at Michigan and elsewhere in the field, they became convinced that, through modern management techniques, the work of the scientists could be enhanced without compromising their creativity or quality standards, thereby affording an acceleration of the research. They outlined a proposal to the U-M and are very pleased with its enthusiastic response.
Says Bill Brehm, "It has been 82 years since insulin became available for therapy. It was a wonderful contribution. However, its effect — we must understand — was not to cure Type I diabetes but rather to alter it from a 'catastrophic' disease to a 'chronic' disease. Now it is time for Type 1 diabetes to become a 'cured' disease."
He continues, "We are very pleased that the University of Michigan is not only willing to mount this major initiative, but that it also stands ready to develop this new paradigm in collaboration with all like-minded research institutions in the United States and elsewhere — to involve all of the fine scientists who today search for a cure for this awful disease. It is a disease that afflicts over 1.3 million Americans, and their families. Diabetes is not a solitary disease, and many of the victims of Type 1 are young children and infants."
Lichter has pledged that the U-M will put "everything we've got" into fulfilling the Brehms' vision. "We're thrilled, and humbled, by their faith in our ability," he says. "Bill and Dee have an extraordinary vision of a new kind of scientific framework for discovery. And they are making this extraordinary commitment because they want a world where children and adults can be free of insulin shots and constant blood tests, and can live without fear of losing their sight, their limbs, or their lives because of this disease."
Adds Dee Brehm, "We proposed this initiative to the University of Michigan because we found there the collaborative spirit and receptive attitudes necessary to consider and then embrace new ways of thinking about medical research. Moreover, Michigan has the technical and administrative strength and breadth to make this initiative a success, and it has the enthusiastic support of President Mary Sue Coleman and the entire University leadership team. If, through our gift, others can be spared the daily burdens of fear and caution and uncertainty that have so colored our lives because of diabetes, our dreams will have been realized."
The plan encompasses four major actions:
* The establishment of a new Center for Type I Diabetes Research at U-M* The design and construction of a new and unique multi-disciplinary research facility to support the Center. The exact location and design of the facility have not been finalized, and will require the approval of the U-M Board of Regents.* The establishment of the Michigan Comprehensive Diabetes Center " a virtual organization aimed at integrating, through communication and collaboration, all research activity on the U-M campus relevant to the search for a cure for Type I diabetes, from medicine and biology to physics, engineering, and information science.* The establishment of eight new faculty positions devoted to Type 1 research, drawing on the finest scientists available worldwide.
"All of these components of the Brehms' gift will work together to foster unprecedented collaboration among all who seek a solution to Type I diabetes," says Robert P. Kelch, M.D., U-M executive vice president for medical affairs, CEO of the U-M Health System. Kelch is a pediatric endocrinologist who has diagnosed and treated many patients with Type I diabetes, and also has experience with the disease among members of his own family.
The gift's centerpiece is $30 million to design, build, and equip a facility that will embody the new approach to Type I research envisioned by the Brehms. The proposed facility will house research laboratory space, information technology infrastructure and other important components to bring diabetes researchers together. And it will be designed to make it easier for doctors, scientists, computer specialists and systems analysts to combine and organize their efforts for speed."
Dee Brehm was first diagnosed as Type 1 during her sophomore year at Eastern Michigan University in 1949, and became a patient of Jerome Conn, M.D., then Chief of Endocrinology at the University of Michigan. Following her marriage to Bill in 1952 when the couple moved to San Diego, her care was continued by a U-M Medical School graduate who guided her through her first ten years of marriage with the disease, and through her two successful pregnancies at a time when women with Type I diabetes often were unable to have children.
Bill, who holds two degrees in mathematics from the University of Michigan, eventually moved the family to Virginia where he entered public service.
He joined the Department of Defense and served as assistant secretary of the Army under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, and later as assistant secretary of Defense under Presidents Nixon and Ford. Today Bill is Chairman Emeritus of SRA International in Fairfax, Virginia; Chairman of the Center for Naval Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia; and a trustee of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.
Diabetes is a family of disorders all relating to insulin, an essential hormone produced by the pancreas that helps the body use food. Type I, or "juvenile," diabetes begins during childhood, adolescence or young adulthood. It is brought on by an inappropriate auto-immune response that causes the death of insulin-producing beta cells within the pancreas, leaving patients reliant on insulin injections for the rest of their lives. Type 2, or "adult onset," occurs mainly in adults whose bodies over time become inefficient at using insulin.
In both kinds of diabetes, serious complications such as blindness, disability, heart disease and kidney failure can occur, especially if patients don't control their blood sugar. Early death is common.
For more information on the Brehm gift to the University of Michigan, visit http://www.med.umich.edu/brehm
UMHS FACT SHEET: Making a strong diabetes program even stronger
The new Brehm Type I Diabetes Research Center will complement two existing U-M diabetes research entities: the Michigan Diabetes Research & Training Center, and the JDRF Center for the Study of Complications in Diabetes.
The MDRTC, directed by William Herman, M.D., is one of only six centers in the nation funded by the National Institutes of Health to pursue basic and clinical research in diabetes. The JDRF center, directed by Eva Feldman, M.D., Ph.D., is funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation to lead basic and clinical studies on the effects of diabetes on nerves, eyes and blood vessels.
The Brehm gift will also enhance and unite laboratory and clinical research, and clinical care, currently under way in many areas of the U-M medical campus. U-M scientists are already hard at work on some of the basic questions related to Type I diabetes, including how gene therapy might restore insulin production, efforts to isolate and grow the stem cells that generate pancreatic beta cells, and studies of how high blood sugar damages nerve cells and leads to complications.
Clinical research in Type I diabetes at U-M is strong, including participation in long-term national studies that have proven that tight blood sugar control can prevent or delay later complications. U-M researchers have developed many tools used by diabetes researchers worldwide, and tested new medications and devices as part of multi-center clinical trials.
The Brehm Center will also complement the U-M's robust diabetes care programs, which were strong when Dee Brehm was first diagnosed and hospitalized for two weeks in 1949, and have since evolved into some of the most comprehensive in the country.
Today, U-M teams diagnose, treat and educate thousands of Type I patients and their families every year. In the Pediatric Endocrinology division headed by Ram Menon, M.D., teams teach children as young as 3 years to use insulin pumps, and offer innovative programs for teens.
Programs for adults with Type I are provided by the Metabolism, Endocrinology & Diabetes Division of the Department of Internal Medicine, headed by Brehm Professor Peter Arvan, M.D., Ph.D. Programs include an intensive insulin program run by Arno Kumagai, M.D. and comprehensive care for seniors at the U-M Geriatrics Center led by Jeffrey Halter, M.D. The U-M diabetes disease management program, headed by Robert Lash, M.D., is one of only eight in the nation recognized by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
U-M also offers many clinical programs to manage and minimize the impact of the complications of Type I diabetes. Eye specialists at the Kellogg Eye Center, kidney specialists in the Division of Nephrology, nerve-disease specialists in the Department of Neurology, cardiologists in the Cardiovascular Center and specialists in the Orthotics & Prosthetics Center all provide advanced, coordinated care for people with complications from Type I diabetes. And the U-M Transplant Center plans to begin a clinical trial of islet cell transplants, a promising treatment for Type I, in mid-2005, adding to its current program of pancreas and kidney transplants for older Type I patients who have developed complications.
The new diabetes initiative spurred by the Brehms' gift will pull together experts from many areas of the University, including the Bioinformatics Program, which finds new ways to handle the vast quantities of data generated by research on genes and proteins, the Bioengineering Program, which develops technological solutions to medical problems, and the Life Sciences Institute, whose director, Alan Saltiel, Ph.D., leads studies on the intricate signaling that allows insulin to do its job.
The Brehms also anticipate that it will draw on the U-M's expertise in research involving embryonic stem cells, which are seen as a promising avenue for generating new islet cells to replace those killed by the immune system during the first stages of Type I diabetes.
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