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University of Michigan researchers receive $3.5 million for diabetes study
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The University of Michigan Health System is receiving a $3.5-million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases that will fund a novel approach to the study of diabetes complications including retinal disease, according to a news release from the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center.
Complications from diabetes adversely affect 25.8 million children and adults in the U.S., according to the release.
The study will focus on type 1 diabetes. The research team will be led by University of Michigan chief of nephrology Frank C. Brosius III, MD; diabetes and obesity specialist Charles Burant, MD, PhD; neurologist Eva L. Feldman, MD, PhD; ophthalmologist Thomas W. Gardner, MD, MS; and assistant professor of internal medicine Subramaniam Pennathur, MBBS.
The researchers have proposed that diabetes disrupts basic metabolic pathways in complication-prone tissues and suggested that understanding altered pathways will pinpoint new targets for drug therapies that treat or prevent diabetic complications, according to the release.
"Fundamentally new approaches are needed to understand the metabolic abnormalities that lead to diabetic complications and develop effective treatment or prevention strategies," Dr. Gardner said in the release. "We are treating the complications of diabetes such as late-stage renal failure, painful neuropathy and vision loss. Our goal is to make this obsolete, to find ways so that patients can retain kidney function, integrity of nerves and keep their vision in spite of diabetes."
The Michigan Metabolomics and Obesity Center has developed technology for assessing the use of different metabolites that may spur the development of diabetic complications, the release said.