| |
JDRF Announces New Funding Opportunity for nPOD Investigators
We are pleased to announce that JDRF has created a new funding opportunity. The nPOD RFA is now available online and the deadline for the Letter of Intent is December 28, 2009. The application deadline is February 8, 2010.
Please visit the Requests for Application section of the JDRF website for more information. And please be sure to visit the JDRF website periodically for application deadline/guideline updates.
nPOD Administrative Offices Have Moved
Please note that the nPOD administrative offices have moved. Our new contact information is available online or can be found below:
JDRF nPOD Project
University of Florida
1600 Southwest Archer Road, Room J497
P.O. Box 1000275
Gainesville, FL 32610
Phone: (352) 273-9297
Fax: (352) 273-9339
Research Spotlight: Matthias von Herrath, MD
 Dr. Matthias von Herrath, Director of the Center for Type 1 Diabetes Research at the La Jolla Institute for
Allergy and Immunology (LIAI) at UCSD, has dedicated his career to the
study of type 1 diabetes (T1D). Together with his post-doctoral
associate Dr. Ken Coppetiers and research scientist Dr. Damien Bresson, he develops potential new drugs for the
treatment of T1D with combination therapy. In addition, Dr. von
Herrath and Dr. Coppieters study the way immune cells enter the pancreas as a patient is developing type 1 diabetes. These
immune cells, called T-cells, invade the pancreas during early T1D
onset. Dr. von Herrath and Dr. Coppieters are the first investigator to live (movie) image the
T-cells while they destroy pancreatic beta-cells, which are the cells
responsible for producing insulin.
In addition, Dr. von
Herrath's team was the first research group to successfully use multiple drugs to slow down the onset of T1D in mice. The next step is to translate this achievement to the clinic. Thanks to the nPOD program, Dr. von
Herrath can study human tissues from the pancreas, spleen, lymph nodes,
and blood from donors with T1D, in order to determine if the
T-cells identified in mouse models are the same cells that destroy beta-cells in human type 1 diabetes.
"The power of the nPOD program," says Dr. von Herrath, "lies
in the diversity of available tissues, and in our ability to
investigate the pathogenesis of type 1 diabetes. The nPOD program
is invaluable to this research."
|
|
nPOD Holds Annual Scientific Meeting
nPOD held its 3rd Annual Scientific Meeting in Washington, DC, in November, 2009.
 Highlights include a "state of the nPOD" address by Mark Atkinson, PhD, nPOD Director (University of Florida) and a guest lecture from Peter In't Veld, PhD, (Diabetes Research Center at the Brussels Free University). Dr. In't Veld emphasized the role pathology samples occupy in the study of type 1 diabetes, and the importance of pancreata and other donor tissues in type 1 diabetes research. The group also heard scientific presentations from 15 nPOD scientists from around the world.
At the meeting, representatives from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) announced that the nPOD project would receive three additional years of funding.
JDRF's nPOD is a collaborative type 1 diabetes research project that supports scientific investigators by providing, without cost, rare and difficult to obtain tissues beneficial to their research. nPOD currently supports more that 30 type 1 diabetes-related scientific studies at institutions around the world.
nPOD Welcomes New OPO Partners
 nPOD is pleased to welcome new partner organizations to the Network. nPOD was recently approved for research partnerships at OneLegacy (Los Angeles, CA) and Golden State Donor Services (Sacramento, CA). These new relationships allow nPOD to screen potential donors for type 1 diabetes-related autoantibodies. Gifts fromthis group of donors help our scientific investigators answer fundamental questions about the early disease porcess in type 1 diabetes, ultimately leading to possible ways to stop the autoimmune porcess in its tracks.
Autoantibody screening for the nPOD project is conducted at our screening laboratories located at the University of Miami, at LABS, Inc. Philadelphia, and the Mendez National Institue of Transplantation, Los Angeles. If you are interested in becoming an nPOD partner organization, please contact us (npod@pathology.ufl.edu).
Interested in learning more about nPOD?
Please contact the nPOD coordinator via email at npod@pathology.ufl.edu or by phone at (352) 273-9297. |
|
