NIDDK News
Seven Initiatives Seek to Bridge Basic, Clinical Research
The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) is pushing to improve the ability of researchers to turn breakthroughs in basic science into new patient treatments and tests, focusing its attention on several initiatives designed to promote this translational research.
The effort to boost translational research follows a high-profile 2003 call to action by participants in the Institute of Medicine’s Clinical Research Roundtable. Those researchers, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, said they were worried that scientific breakthroughs “are failing to be translated efficiently into tangible human benefit.”
Part of NIH Roadmap
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has made promotion of translational research a centerpiece of its “Roadmap for Medical Research in the 21st Century,” and the NIDDK will concentrate its resources in seven areas, including better imaging technologies, better animal models, and a more vigorous search for drugs to treat diseases caused by misformed proteins.
“Concrete initiatives are coming out of this,” said Allen Spiegel, M.D., former director of the NIDDK, who said the effort is designed to help fill “valleys of support” in the research spectrum.
Spiegel acknowledged that the move toward more robust translational research at the NIH will require partnerships with industry, such as pharmaceutical companies, which often foots the bill for later-stage research. “If we are to be successful in translational research, we will have to be extremely thoughtful in how we deal with industry.”
The Seven Translational Areas
Biomarkers: The NIDDK is encouraging researchers to examine new ways to assess disease progression and treatment effects through the use of new tests using blood, tissue, and other samples. Imaging of Solid Abdominal Organs and the Urinary Tract: Doctors are often frustrated by the lack of reliable noninvasive ways of monitoring digestive, kidney, and urinary health, prompting an effort to find better imaging technology and techniques that will allow physicians a more precise understanding of these diseases. Animal Models: The NIDDK is pushing researchers to work on finding new or improved animal models in an effort to improve the safety and efficacy testing of new therapies that must be done before a treatment is offered to humans. Angiogenesis and Diabetes: Control of angiogenesis—the process by which the body creates new blood vessels—could lead to better understanding of several complications of diabetes, such as wound healing and nerve damage, and research into this process may improve the outcomes of islet transplant in patients with type 1 diabetes. Preventing Oxidative Stress: Hyperglycemia, or high blood glucose, often causes a buildup of damaging oxygen molecules in a part of the cell called the mitochondria. The NIDDK is encouraging researchers to find new ways to halt that process, and thereby lessen complications from diabetes. - New Therapies Targeting Proteins: Errors in the way proteins are made and used in the body are responsible for a range of diseases; this effort seeks to find molecules capable of stopping those defects.
NIDDK Welcomes Five New Members to Advisory Council
Five new members have been named to the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). The body serves both to guide the NIDDK’s discussion of broad science policy issues and to provide second-level review of funding requests. The new members, who will serve until 2009, are:
David M. Klurfeld, Ph.D.: Klurfeld serves the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a national program leader in human nutrition in the Agricultural Research Service, where he oversees research designed to define the role of food and its constituents in optimizing health. Klurfeld will join the Digestive Diseases and Nutrition Subcommittee.
Mitchell A. Lazar, M.D., Ph.D.: Lazar is a Sylvan H. Eisnman Professor of Medicine and Genetics and chief of the division of endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, and he directs the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Lazar joins the Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolic Diseases Subcommittee.
Juanita Lynne Merchant, M.D., Ph.D.: A professor of internal medicine and molecular and integrative physiology at the University of Michigan, Merchant studies how bacterial colonization in the gastrointestinal tract can lead to ulcers and cancer. She joins the Digestive Diseases and Nutrition Subcommittee.
David H. Perlmutter, M.D.: Perlmutter is the Vira I. Heinz Professor and Chair of Pediatrics and a professor of cell biology and physiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, the scientific director of the John G. Rangos Sr. Research Center, and physician-in-chief at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. Perlmutter studies liver disease and will join the Digestive Diseases and Nutrition Subcommittee.
Margery Deutz Perry: The past chair of research at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) International, Perry oversaw both the development and implementation of the JDRF’s research goals and priorities. In addition, she supervised and approved all aspects of the JDRF’s research programs. Perry joins the Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolic Diseases Subcommittee.
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NIH Publication No. 06–4552
May 2006
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