About

Activities

The purpose of this medical research organization is to further treatment options for diabetes and related metabolic and vascular conditions.  Over the past several years, genetic applications to malignancy have been added as an additional focus of research. The Foundation performs and supports research which is of practical significance rather than theoretically based. To this purpose, the Foundation engages a medical researcher as Medical Director and supports the requirements of his/her work. The researcher is a physician who actively treats patients at least part time in order to focus on issues of direct relevance to patient care.  Other physician researchers are engaged as Medical Directors in the same way.

The work of the researcher leads to timely progress reports, including potential publication.  Over the years, primary contributions have been made to understanding microvascular disease.  A specific skin microangiopathy was found to be a parallel of diabetic retinopathy and diabetic nephropathy.  This microangiopathy was characterized and shown to affect primarily small capillaries rather than larger arteriovenous shunt vessels.  The discovery of cutaneous microangiopathy has done much to explain the susceptibility of diabetes patients to develop foot ulcers.

The Foundation has also participated in many clinical studies to advance treatment options in diabetes.  In an NIH sponsored study,  the psoriasis drug alefacept was found to slow the ongoing destruction of beta cells which gives rise to type 1 diabetes.

Hereditary malignancy has taken an important place in our research program, with an ongoing collaboration with Dr. Henry Lynch,  who has led the process of discovery of familial cancer.   We have interest in well defined hereditary malignancies, such as the familial atypical  mole malignant melanoma (FAMMM) syndrome.  Research is proceeding on prediction of potential for spread of melanomas in this syndrome.  Not all familial cancers are well defined.  There appears to be significant heterogeneity of the spectrum of malignancy seen in many of these syndromes.  We are assessing extensive databases to see if the heterogeneity relates to specific differences in mutations which occur at genetic loci associated with these malignancy syndromes.