The National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases

Biotechnology Databases, Registries and Information

The mission of the BCBC is to facilitate interdisciplinary approaches that will advance our understanding of pancreatic islet cell development, regenerative capacity and function. The long-term goal is to develop a cell-based therapy, or treatments leading to controlled beta-cell renewal, in order to restore normal insulin production to diabetic patients.

For more information, contact Dr. Olivier Blondel, DEM, Director, Endocrine Systems Biology Program or Dr. Sheryl Sato , DEM, Director, Neurobiology of Obesity and Developmental Biology Programs.

The goal of the Bioinformatics Integration Support Contract (BISC) is to advance the discovery and testing of new therapies for immune-mediated diseases and to further the understanding of the basis of innate and adaptive immunity by providing advanced computer support for scientific data handling and disseminating best practices in scientific data analysis.

For more information, contact Dr. Lisa Spain, DEM, Director, Immunobiology of Type 1 Diabetes Program and Autoimmune Endocrine Diseases Program.

On July 1, 2003, The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) established Central NIDDK Repositories for biosamples and data collected in clinical studies. The purpose of the Central Repositories is to expand the usefulness of these studies by providing access to the biosamples and data to a wider research community beyond the end of the study.

For more information, contact Dr. Rebekah Rasooly, Deputy Director of the Division of Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Diseases.

The Diabetes Genome Anatomy Project (DGAP) represents a unique, multidimensional initiative whose goal is to unravel the interface between insulin action, insulin resistance and the genetics of type 2 diabetes. The overall goal of the project is to identify the sets of the genes involved in insulin action and the predisposition to type 2 diabetes, as well as the secondary changes in gene expression that occur in response to the metabolic abnormalities present in diabetes.

For more information, contact Dr. Olivier Blondel, DEM, Director, Endocrine Systems Biology Program.

Hembase is an integrated browser and genome portal designed for web-based examination of the human erythroid transcriptome. To date, Hembase contains 15,752 entries from erythroblast Expressed Sequenced Tags (ESTs) and 380 referenced genes relevant for erythropoiesis. The database is organized to provide a cytogenetic band position, a unique name as well as a concise annotation for each entry. Search queries may be performed by name, keyword or cytogenetic location. Search results are linked to primary sequence data and three major human genome browsers for access to information considered current at the time of each search. Hembase provides interested scientists and clinical hematologists with a genome-based approach toward the study of erythroid biology.

For more information, contact Dr. Terry Rodgers Bishop, KUH, Director, Hematology Research Programs.

The dbMHC database provides an open, publicly accessible platform for DNA and clinical data related to the human Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC).

For more information, contact Dr. Beena Akolkar, DEM, Director, Immunopathogenesis and Genetics of Type 1 Diabetes Program.

The Centers are housed at outstanding academic institutions, staffed by experts in state-of-the-art technology. Researchers can ship mice to one of the four Centers and obtain on a fee-for-service basis a range of complex exams used to characterize mouse metabolism, blood composition including hormones, energy balance, eating and exercise, organ function and morphology, physiology and histology. Many tests are done in living animals and are designed to elucidate subtle to complex traits that would define models of metabolic disease.

For more information, contact Dr. Maren Laughlin, DEM, Senior Advisor for Integrative Metabolism.

The National Gene Vector Laboratories (NGVL) are composed of an interactive group of academic production and pharm/tox laboratories whose primary goal is to provide eligible investigators with clinical grade vectors for phase I/II gene therapy clinical trials and to provide support for relevant pharmacology/toxicology studies leading up to clinical gene transfer protocols. If the application is approved, clinical grade material will be produced at no cost to the investigator.

For more information, contact Dr. Catherine McKeon, DEM, Senior Advisor for Genetic Research in Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases.

The Nuclear Receptor Resource (NRR) Project is a collection of individual databases on members of the steroid and thyroid hormone receptor superfamily. Although the databases are located on different servers and are managed individually, they each form a node of the NRR. The NRR itself integrates the separate databases and allows an interactive forum for the dissemination of information about the superfamily.

For more information, contact Dr. Ronald Margolis, DEM, Senior Advisor, Molecular Endocrinology.

Commensurate with this directive, NURSA's goals can be distilled into two broad aims: (i) to execute research strategies designed to rapidly and efficiently elucidate those facets of orphan nuclear receptor biology we deem most critical to its understanding; and (ii) to facilitate the generation of hypotheses, design of experiments and communication of results by scientists active in this field. We anticipate that this initiative will provide a valuable service to the nuclear receptor community by developing a web-accessible bioinformatics resource, in which current and emerging data will be organized into more accessible and "user-mineable" forms.

For more information, contact Dr. Ronald Margolis, DEM, Senior Advisor, Molecular Endocrinology.

Biotechnology Multicenter Clinical Research

The NHLBI-led BARI-2D study aims to determine the best therapies for people with type 2 diabetes and moderately severe cardiovascular disease.

For more information, contact Dr. Teresa Jones, DEM, Director, Diabetes Complications Program.

As many as half a million people in the US and 4-6 million world-wide are estimated to have Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD). The most common form is autosomal dominant PKD (ADPKD). The original NIDDK funded Consortium of Radiologic Imaging Study of PKD (CRISP) measured the rates of change in total kidney volume and total cyst volume by MRI, and iothalamate GFR in 241 patients with ADPKD. The study found that kidney enlargement resulting from the expansion of cysts is continuous, quantifiable, and associated with the decline of renal function. Cystic expansion occurs at a consistent rate per individual, although it is heterogeneous in the population, and that larger kidneys are associated with more rapid decrease in renal function. These anatomic characteristics of patient kidneys may provide useful surrogate measures for disease progression, and hence enhance the development of targeted therapies for autosomal dominant PKD. CRISP II is a five-year prospective cohort study to follow 200 ADPKD patients who were part of the original CRISP cohort study. CRISP II will verify and extend the preliminary observations of CRISP to determine the extent to which quantitative (kidney volume and hepatic and kidney cyst volume) or qualitative (cyst distribution and character) structural parameters predict renal insufficiency and develop and test new metrics to quantify and monitor disease progression. This information from CRISP II will help determine if the kidney enlargement can function as an informative surrogate measure for disease progression.

For more information, contact Dr. Catherine Meyers, KUH, Director, Inflammatory Kidney Diseases Program or Dr. Laura Moen, KUH, Director, Renal and Urology Training, Renal Biochemistry and AIDS/HIV Programs.

The mission of DirecNet is to investigate the potential use of glucose monitoring technology and its impact on the management of type 1 diabetes in children.

For more information, contact Dr. Mary Horlick, DDN, Director, Pediatric Clinical Obesity Program.

The Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery is a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded consortium of six clinical centers and a data coordinating center working in cooperation with NIH scientific staff to plan, develop, and conduct coordinated clinical, epidemiological, and behavioral research in the field of bariatric surgery.

For more information, contact Dr. Carolyn Miles, DDN, Director, Clinical Obesity and Nutrition Program.

or http://www.uitn.net/    

The network is a group of collaborating investigators who conduct long-term studies and clinical trials of the most commonly used surgical, pharmacological, and behavioral approaches for management of urinary incontinence in women diagnosed with stress and mixed incontinence.

For more information, contact Dr. Debuene Chang, KUH, Director, Urology and Women's Urological Health Programs; Urology SBIR Program.

Biotechnology Basic Research Networks

The AMDCC is an interdisciplinary consortium designed to develop animal models that closely mimic the human complications of diabetes for the purpose of studying disease pathogenesis, prevention and treatment. The consortium consists of thirteen “pathobiology sites” that study complications such as diabetic nephropathy, uropathy, neuropathy, cardiomyopathy and vascular disease. Additional goals of the AMDCC are to define standards to validate each diabetic complication for its similarity to the human disease, test the role of candidate genes that emerge from human genetic studies, and facilitate the exchange of animals, reagents, and expertise between members of the consortium and the greater scientific community. To ensure that all mice generated under the auspices of the AMDCC are phenotyped for a full duration of diabetes and across all relevant complications, the consortium has formed a close partnership with the NIDDK-funded Mouse Metabolic Phenotyping Centers (MMPCs). The MMPCs (www.mmpc.org) conduct detailed metabolic phenotyping of genetically altered mice and other mouse models that are useful for understanding diabetes and its complications, obesity, and related metabolic diseases or conditions.

For more information, contact Dr. Chris Ketchum, KUH, Director, Basic Renal Biology Program.

The mission of the BCBC is to facilitate interdisciplinary approaches that will advance our understanding of pancreatic islet cell development, regenerative capacity and function. The long-term goal is to develop a cell-based therapy, or treatments leading to controlled beta-cell renewal, in order to restore normal insulin production to diabetic patients.

For more information, contact Dr. Olivier Blondel, DEM, Director, Endocrine Systems Biology Program or Dr. Sheryl Sato , DEM, Director, Neurobiology of Obesity and Developmental Biology Programs.

On July 1, 2003, The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) established Central NIDDK Repositories for biosamples and data collected in clinical studies. The purpose of the Central Repositories is to expand the usefulness of these studies by providing access to the biosamples and data to a wider research community beyond the end of the study.

For more information, contact Dr. Rebekah Rasooly, Deputy Director of the Division of Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Diseases.

The Diabetes Genome Anatomy Project (DGAP) represents a unique, multidimensional initiative whose goal is to unravel the interface between insulin action, insulin resistance and the genetics of type 2 diabetes. The overall goal of the project is to identify the sets of the genes involved in insulin action and the predisposition to type 2 diabetes, as well as the secondary changes in gene expression that occur in response to the metabolic abnormalities present in diabetes.

For more information, contact Dr. Olivier Blondel, DEM, Director, Endocrine Systems Biology Program.

The three major goals of the ICRs are: 1) to provide pancreatic islets of cGMP-quality to eligible investigators for use in FDA approved, IRB-approved transplantation protocols; 2) to optimize the harvest, purification, function, storage, and shipment of islets while developing tests that characterize the quality and predict the effectiveness of islets transplanted into patients with diabetes mellitus; and 3) to provide pancreatic islets for basic science studies.

For more information, contact Dr. Michael Appel, DEM, Director, Islet Biology and Transplantation Research Program.

The Centers are housed at outstanding academic institutions, staffed by experts in state-of-the-art technology. Researchers can ship mice to one of the four Centers and obtain on a fee-for-service basis a range of complex exams used to characterize mouse metabolism, blood composition including hormones, energy balance, eating and exercise, organ function and morphology, physiology and histology. Many tests are done in living animals and are designed to elucidate subtle to complex traits that would define models of metabolic disease.

For more information, contact Dr. Maren Laughlin, DEM, Senior Advisor for Integrative Metabolism.

Commensurate with this directive, NURSA's goals can be distilled into two broad aims: (i) to execute research strategies designed to rapidly and efficiently elucidate those facets of orphan nuclear receptor biology we deem most critical to its understanding; and (ii) to facilitate the generation of hypotheses, design of experiments and communication of results by scientists active in this field. We anticipate that this initiative will provide a valuable service to the nuclear receptor community by developing a web-accessible bioinformatics resource, in which current and emerging data will be organized into more accessible and "user-mineable" forms.

For more information, contact Dr. Ronald Margolis, DEM, Senior Advisor, Molecular Endocrinology.

Biotechnology Reagents

The mission of the BCBC is to facilitate interdisciplinary approaches that will advance our understanding of pancreatic islet cell development, regenerative capacity and function. The long-term goal is to develop a cell-based therapy, or treatments leading to controlled beta-cell renewal, in order to restore normal insulin production to diabetic patients.

For more information, contact Dr. Olivier Blondel, DEM, Director, Endocrine Systems Biology Program or Dr. Sheryl Sato , DEM, Director, Neurobiology of Obesity and Developmental Biology Programs.

On July 1, 2003, The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) established Central NIDDK Repositories for biosamples and data collected in clinical studies. The purpose of the Central Repositories is to expand the usefulness of these studies by providing access to the biosamples and data to a wider research community beyond the end of the study.

For more information, contact Dr. Rebekah Rasooly, Deputy Director of the Division of Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Diseases.

The National Gene Vector Laboratories (NGVL) are composed of an interactive group of academic production and pharm/tox laboratories whose primary goal is to provide eligible investigators with clinical grade vectors for phase I/II gene therapy clinical trials and to provide support for relevant pharmacology/toxicology studies leading up to clinical gene transfer protocols. If the application is approved, clinical grade material will be produced at no cost to the investigator.

For more information, contact Dr. Catherine McKeon, DEM, Senior Advisor for Genetic Research in Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases.

Biotechnology Services

The mission of the BCBC is to facilitate interdisciplinary approaches that will advance our understanding of pancreatic islet cell development, regenerative capacity and function. The long-term goal is to develop a cell-based therapy, or treatments leading to controlled beta-cell renewal, in order to restore normal insulin production to diabetic patients.

For more information, contact Dr. Olivier Blondel, DEM, Director, Endocrine Systems Biology Program or Dr. Sheryl Sato , DEM, Director, Neurobiology of Obesity and Developmental Biology Programs.

On July 1, 2003, The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) established Central NIDDK Repositories for biosamples and data collected in clinical studies. The purpose of the Central Repositories is to expand the usefulness of these studies by providing access to the biosamples and data to a wider research community beyond the end of the study.

For more information, contact Dr. Rebekah Rasooly, Deputy Director of the Division of Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Diseases.

The three major goals of the ICRs are: 1) to provide pancreatic islets of cGMP-quality to eligible investigators for use in FDA approved, IRB-approved transplantation protocols; 2) to optimize the harvest, purification, function, storage, and shipment of islets while developing tests that characterize the quality and predict the effectiveness of islets transplanted into patients with diabetes mellitus; and 3) to provide pancreatic islets for basic science studies.

For more information, contact Dr. Michael Appel, DEM, Director, Islet Biology and Transplantation Research Program.

The Centers are housed at outstanding academic institutions, staffed by experts in state-of-the-art technology. Researchers can ship mice to one of the four Centers and obtain on a fee-for-service basis a range of complex exams used to characterize mouse metabolism, blood composition including hormones, energy balance, eating and exercise, organ function and morphology, physiology and histology. Many tests are done in living animals and are designed to elucidate subtle to complex traits that would define models of metabolic disease.

For more information, contact Dr. Maren Laughlin, DEM, Senior Advisor for Integrative Metabolism.

NIH RAID provides a variety of contract services researchers need to bring promising potential therapeutics to trial.

Biotechnology Standardization Programs

Biotechnology Tissues, Cells, Animals

The AMDCC is an interdisciplinary consortium designed to develop animal models that closely mimic the human complications of diabetes for the purpose of studying disease pathogenesis, prevention and treatment. The consortium consists of thirteen “pathobiology sites” that study complications such as diabetic nephropathy, uropathy, neuropathy, cardiomyopathy and vascular disease. Additional goals of the AMDCC are to define standards to validate each diabetic complication for its similarity to the human disease, test the role of candidate genes that emerge from human genetic studies, and facilitate the exchange of animals, reagents, and expertise between members of the consortium and the greater scientific community. To ensure that all mice generated under the auspices of the AMDCC are phenotyped for a full duration of diabetes and across all relevant complications, the consortium has formed a close partnership with the NIDDK-funded Mouse Metabolic Phenotyping Centers (MMPCs). The MMPCs (www.mmpc.org) conduct detailed metabolic phenotyping of genetically altered mice and other mouse models that are useful for understanding diabetes and its complications, obesity, and related metabolic diseases or conditions.

For more information, contact Dr. Chris Ketchum, KUH, Director, Basic Renal Biology Program.

The mission of the BCBC is to facilitate interdisciplinary approaches that will advance our understanding of pancreatic islet cell development, regenerative capacity and function. The long-term goal is to develop a cell-based therapy, or treatments leading to controlled beta-cell renewal, in order to restore normal insulin production to diabetic patients.

For more information, contact Dr. Olivier Blondel, DEM, Director, Endocrine Systems Biology Program or Dr. Sheryl Sato , DEM, Director, Neurobiology of Obesity and Developmental Biology Programs.

On July 1, 2003, The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) established Central NIDDK Repositories for biosamples and data collected in clinical studies. The purpose of the Central Repositories is to expand the usefulness of these studies by providing access to the biosamples and data to a wider research community beyond the end of the study.

For more information, contact Dr. Rebekah Rasooly, Deputy Director of the Division of Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Diseases.

To encourage the application of proteomic and metabolomic technologies to study type 1 diabetes and its complications, the NIDDK is fostering collaborations between researchers studying type 1 diabetes and investigators with expertise in Proteomics and/or Metabolomics.

For more information, contact Dr. Salvatore Sechi, DEM, Director, Proteomic Program.

The three major goals of the ICRs are: 1) to provide pancreatic islets of cGMP-quality to eligible investigators for use in FDA approved, IRB-approved transplantation protocols; 2) to optimize the harvest, purification, function, storage, and shipment of islets while developing tests that characterize the quality and predict the effectiveness of islets transplanted into patients with diabetes mellitus; and 3) to provide pancreatic islets for basic science studies.

For more information, contact Dr. Michael Appel, DEM, Director, Islet Biology and Transplantation Research Program.

The Centers are housed at outstanding academic institutions, staffed by experts in state-of-the-art technology. Researchers can ship mice to one of the four Centers and obtain on a fee-for-service basis a range of complex exams used to characterize mouse metabolism, blood composition including hormones, energy balance, eating and exercise, organ function and morphology, physiology and histology. Many tests are done in living animals and are designed to elucidate subtle to complex traits that would define models of metabolic disease.

For more information, contact Dr. Maren Laughlin, DEM, Senior Advisor for Integrative Metabolism.

The goal of the MMRRC program is to enhance the availability of and help ensure the quality of genetically modified mice for biomedical research of human and animal biology and disease.

For more information, contact Dr. Kristin Abraham, DEM, Director, Cell Signaling and Diabetes Centers Program.

NIDDK has funded a Type 1 Diabetes Resource (T1DR) at The Jackson Laboratory (TJL). The purpose of this resource is to collect and cryopreserve ~150 mouse stocks important to research in type 1 diabetes.

For more information, contact Dr. Kristin Abraham, DEM, Director, Cell Signaling and Diabetes Centers Program.

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