nPOD News and Events

Welcome to New nPOD Investigators

nPOD is pleased to welcome 12 new investigators. nPOD now supports over 40 international investigators engaged in efforts to better understand the disease process in type 1 diabetes and find ways to prevent and ultimately cure the disease. Below is a list of recently approved projects:

Project Name: Generation of tools to distinguish human pancreatic cell populations

PI: Douglas Melton, Ph.D., Harvard University
 
Project Name: E-cadherin mediates developmental effects on the proliferation and the function of ß-cells in the islet of Langerhans

PI: Rudy Leibel, M.D. Columbia University
Co-PI: Nao Wakae, M. Phil. Columbia University
 
Project Name: Microangiopathy in diabetic bone marrow

PI: Paolo Madeddu, M. D., University of Bristol, UK
Co-PI: Costanza Emanueli, Ph.D., University of Bristol, UK
 
Project Name: Peri-capsular basement membrane degradation during leukocyte penetration into the pancreatic islet during development of human type 1 diabetes

PI: Lydia Sorokin, Ph.D., University of Muenster, Germany
Co-PI: Eva Korpos, Ph.D., University of Muenster, Germany
 
Project Name: Characterization of the nPOD samples virome by high throughput DNA sequencing

PI: John Todd, Ph.D., University of Cambridge, UK
Co-PI: Vincent Plagnol, Ph.D., University College London Genetics Institute, UK
Co-PI: Herbert ‘Skip’ Virgin, M.D., Ph.D., Washington University School of Medicine

Welcome to new nPOD Staff

Please join us in welcoming Carmen Leah Retrum to the JDRF nPOD project as Program Assistant. Carmen will support the staff members in the Administrative Core and assist with daily logistics for the project. She is a recent graduate from the University of Florida, with a B.S. in Psychology and an M.S. in Health Education & Behavior. During her time at UF, Carmen was also a competitive swimmer, earning 12 All-American honors and an individual national championship. Welcome, Carmen!

 

nPOD Welcomes new Partners

nPOD is pleased to welcome two new partners to the nPOD Network:

The International Institute for the Advancement of Medicine (IIAM)

IIAM is one of the largest recovery and placement networks in the world for donated human organs and tissues. IIAM honors the wishes of donors and their families who seek to contribute to medical research. These donations help scientists unlock the mysteries of diseases like type 1 diabetes and facilitate the development of treatments and therapies. IIAM supports the nPOD project through its partnerships with organ procurement organizations throughout the United States. To learn more about IIAM, please visit their Web Site at www.iiam.org. Welcome, IIAM!

LABS, Inc., Denver, Colorado

LABS, Inc., has been a partner of the nPOD project since 2009, when its Philadelphia facility began screening donor samples from Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs) for two type 1 diabetes related autoantibodies. This month, the Denver, CO LABS, Inc facility will provide similar services for additional OPO partners. To learn more about LABS, Inc., please visit their Web site.

For information on how you can become an nPOD partner organization, please contact the nPOD Administrative offices at (352) 273-9296

 

Investigator Spotlight: Drug Therapy as a Treatment for Type 1 Diabetes

Matthias von Herrath, M.D., La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, University of California, San Diego

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."

Several nPOD Investigators to be Published in Diabetologia

It is our privilege to announce that several of our investigators (Roberto Gianani, MD, Martha Campbell-Thompson, DVM, PhD, Suparna A. Sarkar, MBBS, PhD, Alberto Pugliese, MD, Sally Kent, PhD, Susan Bonner-Weir, Ph D, Mark A. Atkinson, PhD, and Matthias von Herrath, MD) co-authored a paper entitled: "Dimorphic Histopathology of Long Standing Childhood-Onset Diabetes," which is to be published in an upcoming issue of Diabetologia.

JDRF Announces nPOD RFA for Investigators

We are pleased to announce that JDRF has created a new funding opportunity. Below please find the JDRF nPOD RFA:

Link to the nPOD RFA

Please also note the following deadlines:

Letter of Intent deadline:  December 28, 2009
Application deadline:  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.

Research Spotlight: A New Angle on the Progression of Type 1 Diabetes

Jo Spencer, Ph.D., King's College London School of Medicine

Dr. Jo Spencer has published extensively on immune cells that reside in the gastrointestinal system, or gut.  Because this organ shares many similarities with the pancreas, Dr. Spencer has brought her expertise into the field of type 1 diabetes (T1D).  Dr. Spencer’s research transitioned from the field of mucosal immune cell infiltration to the field of diabetes due to the availability of tissues through the nPOD program. By examining the immune cells present in T1D pancreata, Dr. Spencer hopes to understand what role these cells have in T1D progression. Certain immune cells are seen in the pancreas in T1D patients, but only during a certain window of time during T1D onset.  Dr. Spencer’s research is critical to uncovering the mechanisms of immune cells present in the pancreas during T1D onset.

Thanks to the nPOD program, Dr. Spencer has access to many tissues and slides, both in the laboratory and through online banking.  “It’s been a rare privilege to work with the nPOD collection, and to actually see the specimens online before receiving them,” Dr. Spencer remarked in our interview.  Her research on immune cells in T1D progression provides an anatomical viewpoint and gives researchers a new way to understand this disease in humans.  Ultimately the nPOD program and investigators such as Dr. Spencer will contribute to the knowledge about T1D onset and progression, and will aid the development of new therapies for T1D patients.

nPOD Welcomes New Investigators - Fall 2009

nPOD is pleased to welcome the following new investigators to the project:

Akihisa Imagawa, MD, PhD
Osaka University
Histological Differences between Japanese and Western Type 1 Diabetes

Sara Michie, PhD
Stanford University
Tissue-selective Chemokines and Adhesion Molecules in Type 1 Diabetes

Jerry Nadler, MD
Eastern Virginia Medical School
12/15 Lipoxygenase Expression in Type 1 Diabetes

Suparna Sarkar, PhD and Dirk Homann, PhD
University of Colorado, Denver
Pancreatic Expression of Chemokines in Human Type 1 Diabetes

Gerald Taborsky, PhD
University of Washington
Sypathetic Neuropathy in Type 1 Diabetes

Steve Tracy, PhD
University of Nebraska
Enteroviral Infection and Type 1 Diabetes

nPOD Wins Poster of Distinction at NATCO Conference

Congratulations to Patrick Rowe, PhD, whose poster presentation: "Network for Pancreatic Organ Donors with Type 1 Diabetes (nPOD): Progress and Donor Demographics" won Top Abstract/Case Study presented in a Poster Format at the NATCO 34th Annual Meeting in August, 2009. NATCO is committed to the advancement of organ and tissue donation and transplantation. Its membership is comprised of a diverse group of professionals, including procurement practitioners, transplant practitioners, hospital development specialists, and public education specialists. For more

Investigator Spotlight: Humanizing the Mouse for nPOD Tissue Engraftment

by Nicole N. Parker

Dr. Dale Greiner of the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine has been collaborating with Dr. Len Shultz, of the Jackson Laboratory, for over 25 years.  He and Dr. Shultz have developed a mouse model for human type I diabetes (T1D).  This “humanized mouse” model is a severely immunodeficient mouse strain with the gene for the Interleukin-2 (IL-2) receptor common gamma-chain knocked out.  This model is significant because it allows functions of a human immune system to be studied in a mouse model with almost no immune system of its own.  Over the past few years the humanized mouse has become the premier host for efficient engraftment of human cells and tissues.  Human cells, such as spleen cells from donors, through the nPOD program, can be engrafted into this mouse and will result in characteristics of human T1D:  inflammation of the  pancreatic islets , which contain the insulin-producing beta cells of the body; human antibodies raised against the mouse’s beta cells; and partial destruction of these beta cells due to islet inflammation.  This is a major research tool because of the relative ease in which the human immune system can be studied, and due to the close resemblance of this model to human Type I diabetes.

The humanized mouse model can also be highly specified for optimization of individualized clinical therapies and regimens.  By modifying certain target sites on mouse beta cells to mimic the sites of human beta cells, a panel of humanized mice can be used to investigate methods for halting beta cell destruction following injection of peripheral blood lymphocytes from human T1D patients.  This would be minimally invasive to the patient, requiring only a blood draw.  However, this experimental model system and the humanized mouse model would not be possible without the development of the nPOD program, which procures and distributes human tissues to T1D investigators.  Dr. Greiner has described his experience with the nPOD program as “simply outstanding.”  nPOD has facilitated the collaboration of many T1D investigators as well as emphasized the importance of tissue and organ donations.  Such a partnership helps drive research and understanding of the T1D autoimmune mechanism.

nPOD to attend ADA, AOPO and NATCO Conferences

nPOD staff will be on site at a number of scientific and professional conferences this summer. Please be sure to visit our booth if you have plans to be at any of the following events:

American Diabetes Association (ADA), 69th Scientific Sessions, June 2009, New Orleans

Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO), Annual Meeting, June 2009, St. Louis, MO

North American Transplant Coordinators Organization (NATCO), 34th Annual Meeting, August 2009, Las Vegas

nPOD Welcomes New Scientific Investigators

Investigator	Affiliation	Project Area
Jerry Nepom	Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason	Immunology
Al Powers	Vanderbilt University	Islet and Pancreas Pathology
Eric Triplett and Martha Campbell-Thompson	University of Florida	Disease Etiology
Ake Sjoholm	Karolinska Institutet	Disease Etiology

nPOD hosts conference, scientific update

Leading type 1 diabetes investigators from around the world joined nPOD project partners, along with representatives from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), for nPOD’s 2nd Annual Conference and Scientific Update on October 19-20, 2008 in Washington, DC.  Susan Bonner-Weir, Ph.D., Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard University, delivered the keynote address entitled, “Of mice and man: what we know, what we need to learn.” During her talk, Bonner-Weir compared and contrasted mouse vs. human diabetes pathogenesis, emphasizing the differences in beta cell biology. These differences, Bonner-Weir noted, underscore the importance of nPOD tissues for scientists who study human beta cells, particularly given the opportunity to employ newly available technologies in order to gain an understanding of the pathophysiology of human type 1 diabetes. Project reports by other investigators, including Dale Greiner, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, and Roberto Gianani, M.D., University of Colorado, drew into question long standing dogmas about disease etiology and progression. For more information about the annual conference, please contact nPOD.