Multimillion Dollar NIH Grant to Fund Joint Hopkins-University of Maryland Effort
The National Institutes of Health will award $7.4 million to The Johns Hopkins University to establish the Baltimore Diabetes Research and Training Center (DRTC), which will conduct basic research and community-level research on diabetes and obesity in both adults and children.
The center will be a collaborative effort among three Johns Hopkins entities - the School of Medicine, the Bloomberg School of Public Health and the School of Nursing - as well as the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Nearly 140 researchers will be involved in the center, whose experts will particularly focus on high rates in children of type 2 diabetes, a form of the disease historically seen almost exclusively in adults.
“The incidence of type 2 diabetes has risen dramatically in children, meaning younger and younger adults are suffering from diabetes-related complications such as blindness and kidney failure,” says Fredric Wondisford, M.D., chief of the Division of Metabolism at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and director of the new center to be housed in the new John G. Rangos Sr. Building on the East Baltimore campus. “This new center will not only allow us to conduct important basic research into what causes diabetes and how to treat and prevent it, but to apply what we learn in an urban setting.”
Type 2 diabetes is a major public health problem in Baltimore, ranking among the 10 leading causes of death for city residents. According to local public health experts, diabetes, obesity and their complications are especially problematic for the city’s African-American population.
The Baltimore center will be one of five DRTCs funded by the NIH’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the only one in the Mid-Atlantic region and the only one with a focus on childhood diabetes.
“The NIH grant recognizes the complementary strengths that both institutions offer,” says Alan Shuldiner, M.D., co-director of the DRTC and John Whitehurst Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “While Hopkins’ strength lies in animal and epidemiological research, we bring expertise in the area of human genomics and clinical research in patients with diabetes and obesity.” A leading researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and an endocrinologist at the University of Maryland Joslin Diabetes Center, Shuldiner is recognized for his genetic research with the Old Order Amish in Lancaster County, Pa., and studies of the genes that may cause obesity and diabetes.
The center will have eight research focus groups: cell biology and immunology, clinical investigation, diabetic complications, genetics, gene regulation, obesity, receptors and signaling, and translation. It will also have six core laboratories: cell biology, integrated physiology, transgenic/embryonic stem cell, genetics, clinical investigation, and prevention and control.