GHSU expert to again coordinate two national diabetes initiatives

Two national efforts supporting diabetes research will again be coordinated by a Georgia Health Sciences University bioinformatics expert.

Dr. Richard A. McIndoe, Associate Director of the GHSU Center for Biotechnology and Genomic Medicine, is leading the Coordinating and Bioinformatics Unit for the Mouse Metabolic Phenotyping Centers, which supports laboratory studies, and the newly revamped Diabetic Complications Consortium, which supports human and laboratory studies.

McIndoe has received a $7.5 million, five-year National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases grant to support studies of the disease which affects about 8.3 percent of Americans, according to the American Diabetes Association. Heart attack, stroke, vision loss and kidney damage are major complications.

The Mouse Metabolic Phenotyping Centers (see http://www.mmpc.org) makes the specialized, expensive mouse-testing capabilities of six research universities available and affordable to researchers nationwide. Center expertise includes characterizing mouse metabolism, blood composition, energy balance, energy and exercise, organ function and morphology, physiology and histology.

The Diabetic Complications Consortium (see http://www.diacomp.org) helps fund short-term studies in animals or humans to better understand complications, which are the primary causes of diabetes-related deaths, McIndoe said. The consortium replaces the Animal Models of Diabetic Complications Consortium, which was specifically designed to develop and share mouse models.

While the former consortium supported 13 sites, the revamped one opens the doors to basic scientists and clinicians alike to pursue a one-year grant for up to $100,000 to help zero in on some aspect of a complication, such as how a new drug affects diabetic cardiovascular disease. The research ideally will lead to larger grants that may include development of more mouse models, which are still needed, McIndoe said.

The raw data generated will be shared broadly with the scientific community. "I like the idea of providing a clearinghouse for diabetes complications data; there really is no other place that does that. You can think of it like an electronic lab notebook," McIndoe said. "We organize and display it for anyone who needs it."

Unlike published data, which only provides a glimpse of the actual information obtained, the consortium enables complete data sets to be analyzed by scientists who may have a different interest or angle. It also helps scientists reduce unnecessary replication and fine-tune their work, McIndoe said.