Posted by Mary on April 28, 1998 at 15:49:20:
In Reply to: Re: Santa Barbara Diabetes Project posted by Al Gordon on April 25, 1998 at 14:07:47:
The following is an excerpt form e-mail that I received from Jocelyn Ondre about the Santa Barabara Project. Sort of lengthy, but I hope this answers some questions for everyone.
< RE>>Santa Barbara Project 4/28/98 The Santa Barbara Diabetes Project Samsum Medical Research Institute During the past two decades, diabetes research has made rapid progress as Progress to date: At that meeting work also began on a set of intellectual property On October 4-6 , 1997, the Sansum Medical Research Institute brought During the meeting investigators were also introduced to the Virtual Islet Experiment Databank: The Santa Barbara Diabetes Project Virtual Future Steps: The estimated annual budget to fund the research team at Sansum as well as The commitment and spirit which emerged from the February planning session March 27, 1998 SANTA BARBARA DIABETES PROJECT Monique A. Berman, Ph.D. Wayman Cheatham, M.D. Claes B. Hellerstrom, M.D. Lois Jovanovic, M.D. Mitchell Kaminski, M.D. Ake Lernmark, M. D., Ph.D. Larry G. Moss, M.D. Christopher Newgard, Ph.D. Jocelyn M. Ondre Jerry Palmer, M. D. Jacob Petersen, Ph.D. R. Paul Robertson, M.D. Duane Sears, Ph.D. Robert L. Sorenson, PhD David Sutherland, M.D., Ph.D. Hiroo Toyoda Ph.D. Aaron I Vinik, M.D., Ph.D. Ken Waxman, M.D. Gordon C. Weir, M.D. Joseph A. Zasadzinski Mary
From: jocelyn@sansumres.com (Jocelyn Ondre)
To: meld2jpd@aol.com ( Meld2jpd)
Mary, no the description on the web-site is outdated and we are working to
update the project and its next steps. The Virtual Lab is up and
running--all the scientists are connected through this technology. We
will be also having a working mtg. mtg. here with the scientists in
August. We will also be collecting data on islet transplants
experiments--in much more thorough detail than done before.
I will cut and paste into this message for you the three page description
and the listing of the participating scientists.
The Plan for a Cure for Diabetes
2219 Bath Street Santa Barbara, California 93105
(805) 682-7638 FAX (805) 682-3332
Background:
The Sansum Medical Research Institute has a long and distinguished history
in medical research. The Institute was founded by Dr. William D. Sansum,
who moved to Santa Barbara in 1920 to carry on the research and treatment
of diabetes begun by Dr. Nathaniel Potter, one of the foremost
diagnosticians in the world in the field of metabolic medicine. At that
time, a diagnosis of diabetes was tantamount to a death sentence. Two
years later, Dr. Sansum received national recognition as the first
physician in the United States to manufacture insulin, which he used to
successfully treat his patients. Twenty-two years later, in 1944, the
Sansum Medical Research Institute was incorporated as a charitable
tax-exempt organization dedicated to research and education in medicine.
Today under the leadership of Dr. Lois Jovanovic, Chief Scientific Officer
and Director, the Research Institute continues as a leader in diabetes
research in the U.S.
advances in research and technology have brought many scientists to
believe that a cure is on the horizon. While there is research underway
at medical, academic and pharmaceutical centers all over the world, little
collaboration or sharing of information from the diverse research fields
takes place. The Santa Barbara Diabetes Project represents a
collaboration of the world's leading scientists in a number of scientific,
medical, surgical and engineering fields to apply cooperatively their
expertise to the problem of curing diabetes. In February 1997 Dr.
Jovanovic initiated the pre-planning session for the project.
The February 1997 pre-planning session brought together eighteen national
experts to: 1) plan the worldwide research partnership and 2) to
nominate candidates from medical, engineering and scientific fields to
participate in a research strategy session later in the year. The first
day of the meeting was dedicated to a critical review of ongoing research
efforts in the areas of tissue transplantation, gene manipulation and
creation of an artificial pancreas. Each subject was addressed by a key
presenter. A formal response and group discussion followed. The purpose
of the process was to evaluate the strategy for the research in three main
directions: islet transplantation and immunology, gene therapy, and
prosthetic pancreatic mechanisms and to select those critical research
paths with the highest probability of reaching a diabetes cure. There was
general agreement that the research target was beta cell therapy coupled
with gene manipulation and immunologic blockers of rejection in order to
restore normal blood glucose levels as well as to prevent recurrence of
the autoimmune process which originally destroyed the patient's beta cells.
principles to facilitate free exchange of research insights while
protecting the authorship of original discoveries. A local attorney
donated his time to help guide this process.
together the nominated scientists for the first scientific strategy
session of the Santa Barbara Diabetes Project. Over twenty
internationally renowned scientists in the fields of immunology, cell
therapy, transplantation technologies, gene therapy and metabolism
attended this two day symposium. During the two day symposium, scientists
collaborated to develop and design a research strategy for each of the
priority research paths. The three major categories, Islet Cell Biology
and Encapsulation, Transplantation, and Immunology and Prevention,
provided the structure for several areas of sub-categories to be defined
and discussed. The meeting achieved its goal by designing a viable
strategic plan aimed to create the biological means to restore and
maintain beta cell function in type 1 diabetic patients.
Laboratory, computer technology designed specifically for this project to
facilitate timely collaborations despite the distance between individual
research institutions and the researchers' laboratories. The Virtual
Laboratory will serve as a central area where members can communicate
ideas, share data from their own laboratories, collaborate on abstracts,
papers and grant proposals. The Virtual Laboratory will have discussion
groups, meeting areas, a bulletin board to schedule meetings/symposia and
e-mail. Our first scope of work will be to develop an Islet Experiment
Databank.
Laboratory
The Virtual Laboratory will be a repository for the primary data from each
investigator's laboratory with a detailed, itemized spreadsheet of all the
relevant statistics on all of the diabetic patients who received a
pancreatic islet cell transplant. Each patient's age, weight, duration of
diabetes, number of islet cells received, culture conditions of the cells
prior to transplantation, and culture media description along with the
nutrients and antibiotics used, patient's blood glucose levels at the time
of transplantation and for the months immediately following the procedure,
total dose of insulin needed before the transplant, and the highest
insulin secretion documented for each patient will be entered. It is
estimated that, of the 20 laboratories involved in this collaborative
effort, there have been over 300 patients or pertinent experiments
performed. A pooling of the data on all of these patients will allow for
the observation of the best procedures and methods to take the next step
forward. Pooling both the successful (defined as documented insulin
output from the transplanted cells) and the unsuccessful data (defined as
no insulin output from the transplanted cells) will quickly and
specifically help guide the creation of the protocol for the first
experiments for the team of scientists to perform together.
The Project calls for an expert panel to: 1) oversee the overall research
effort, 2) coordinate the work of combined research teams at Sansum and 3)
insure timely communication between research institutions. At Sansum, the
research team will consist of a senior research scientist, computer
scientist, technicians, equipment and supplies to implement the
strategies. Teams of investigators (groups of three investigators per
time period, composed of a cell therapist, immunologist and islet cell
physiologist) will join the research scientists at Sansum for three to
four months for mini-sabbaticals to build incrementally on the foundations
established by all the other teams.
the above mentioned support and equipment, the teams of investigators and
the Virtual Laboratory is $1.1 million. We have raised $350,000 and are
seeking matching funds to boost this project forward. We hope to hire the
senior scientist in early summer and build the remaining team as soon as
possible. Sansum is committed to serving as the anchor organization for
the project by providing the resources, infrastructure and oversight
needed to effectively implement the plan.
and the scientific strategy symposium in October have distinguished the
Santa Barbara Diabetes Project as a leading scientific collaboration with
the sole purpose to create the breakthroughs needed for a cure for
diabetes. The goal of the Santa Barbara Diabetes Project is to reach that
end more quickly than would otherwise occur. All of the essential
components are in place to implement the research plan developed. A third
working meeting is being scheduled for the summer of 1998. Over the next
several months the Virtual Laboratory will actively serve as the conduit
through which information is shared and data collected. We recently
dedicated a full-time staff member with expertise in this area to oversee
the Virtual Laboratory and generate communication.
Sansum and its partners will continue in earnest to develop further the
directions of this promising collaboration that will speed the day when
people with diabetes are made well.
SCIENTIFIC PANEL
Fritz Bach. M.D.
Sandoz Center for Immunobiology
Room 370
99 Brookline Ave.
Boston, MA 02215
617-632-1199
617-632-1198 fax
E-mail: fbache@biomc.harvard.edu
Director, Center for Research and
Treatment of Immune and Inflammatory Diseases (CRTIID)
Children's Hospital of Orange County
Orange, CA 92868
714-997-3000
714-5164318 fax
E-mail: maberman@uci.edu
Medical Director
Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
100 Overlook Center, Suite 200
Princeton, NJ
609-987-3926
609-987-3092 fax
E-mail: WACH@novo.dk
Biomedical Center
PO Box 571
Uppsalla, Sweden S-751 23
4618174329
4618556401 fax
E-mail: claes.hellerstrom@medcellbiol.uu.se
Director and Chief Scientific Officer
Sansum Medical Research Institute
2219 Bath St.
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
805-682-7638
805-682-3332 Fax
E-mail: lois@sansumres.com
Clinical Professor of Surgery
Chicago Medical School
Thorek Hospital Medical Center
850 W. Irving Park Rd., Ste. 625
Chicago, IL 60613
773-975-6726
773-525-6780 fax
E-mail: kaminskimd@mem.po.com
University of Washington
Department of Medicine/Box 357710
1959 Pacific Ave., Rm K-165
Seattle, WA 98195
206-543-5316
206-543-3169 fax
E-mail: ake@u.washington.edu
Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, Metabolism and Molecular Medicine
Tufts University/New England Medical Center
750 Washington St., Box 268
Boston, MA 02111
617-636-8925
617-636-4719 fax
E-mail: LARRY.moss@es.nemc.org
UTSW Center Diabetes Research
5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
Dallas, TX 75235
214-648-2930
E-mail: newgard@utsw.swmed.edu
Director of Development
Sansum Medical Research Institute
2219 Bath St.
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
805-682-7640, ext 210
805-682-7332 fax
E-mail: jocelyn@sansum.res.com
Professor, Department of Medicine
University of Washington
Chief, Endocrinology, Metabolism & Nutrition
Dept. of Veterans Affairs Medical Center
1660 South Columbian Way
Seattle, WA 98108
206-764-2495
206-764-2693 fax
E-mail: fpp@u.washington.edu
Zygometrics, Inc.
1202 Eastlake Ave. East
Seattle, WA 98122
206-442-6600
206-442-6694 fax
E-mail: jspe@zgi.com
CEO/SciDirector
Professor of Medicine, University of Washington
Pacific Northwest Research Foundation
Laboratories for Medical Research
720 Broadway
Seattle, WA 98122
206-726-1210
206-726-1217 fax
E-mail: rpr@u.washington.edu
Cyrus Safinya, Ph.D.
Professor, Materials Science and Physics
University of California Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
805-893-8635
805-893-8502 fax
E-mail: safinya@engineering.ucsb.edu
Professor of Immunology and Biochemistry
University of California Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3020
893-3499
893-4724 fax
E-mail: sears@lifesci.ucsb.edu
University of Minnesota
321 Church St., SE
Cell Biology 4-157 Jackson Hall
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612-624-6414
612-624-8118 fax
E-mail: robertso@lenti.med.umn.edu
Head, Division of Transplantation
Department of Surgery
University of Minnesota Hospital
420 Delaware St. SE (PO Box 280 )
Minneapolis, MN 55455-0374
612-625-7600
E-mail: dsuther@tc.umn.edu
3922 Emerald St., #158
Torrance, CA 90503
310-214-9341
E-mail: Toyodah@aol.com
Massimo M. Trucco, M.D.
Professor of Immunogenetics
Department of Pediatrics
University of Pittsburg
3705 5th Ave. Rangos, Ste 6130
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412-692-6570
412-692-5809 fax
E-mail:
massimo_trucco@poplar.chp.edu
Eastern Virginia Med School
855 W. Brambleton Avenue
Norfolk, VA 23510
804-446-5912
804-446-5970 fax
E-mail: aiv@dil.evms.edu
Chair, Department of Surgery
Cottage Hospital
Pueblo and Bath
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
805-682-7111
E-mail: kwaxman@sbch.org
Joslin Diabetes Center
One Joslin Place
Boston, MA 02215
617-732-2581
617-732-2650 fax
E-mail: weirg@joslab.harvard.edu
Professor, Chemical Engineering and Materials
Department of Chemical Engineering
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3020
805-893-4769
805-893-4731
E-mail: Gorilla@engineering.ucsb.edu>>>
Think it might be worth following.
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