Seven research teams with fresh approaches to solving the riddle of Type 1 diabetes have received funding through an initiative that first tapped the creativity of Harvard’s schools and affiliated institutions just over a year ago.
It was in February 2010 that the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center, known as Harvard Catalyst, launched a bold crowd-sourcing experiment called the Ideation Challenge. Some 40,000 faculty, staff and students, along with the general public, were invited to answer the question: What do we not know to cure Type 1 diabetes?
A panel of experts reviewed 190 suggestions and zeroed in on 12 outstanding responses—some of them from nonexperts, including a student at Harvard College and a human resources manager at HMS. Each of the dozen contest winners received $2,500 and agreed to release their idea and intellectual property to Harvard.
In November, proposals for research to explore several of the dozen winning ideas were solicited by the Harvard Institute of Translational Immunology, or HITI. From a pool of 31 entries, seven were deemed as most worthy of pilot funding. The pilot grant program, supported by $1 million from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, is HITI’s first effort to convene multidisciplinary translational and clinical investigators from across Harvard to study immune-mediated diseases.
According to HITI Co-directors Arlene Sharpe, the George Fabyan Professor of Comparative Pathology, and Larry Turka, HMS lecturer on medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the goal of these seven research projects is threefold: to better understand the origins of these diseases, to formulate immune-based assays to support human clinical trials and improve diagnostics, and, ultimately, to develop novel therapies.
Most of the winning entries involve the creation of new, multidisciplinary teams that introduce new investigators to the study of Type 1 diabetes.
“The assembly of these groups is in itself an important metric of success,” said Eva Guinan, director of the Harvard Catalyst Linkages Program.
Seven Projects and Their LeadersHarvey Cantor, Baruj Benacerraf Professor of Pathology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), will use novel strategies to expand populations of the recently identified suppressor T cell CD8+ Treg and examine the potential therapeutic effects of this cell type on the progression of Type 1 diabetes.
Stephen Elledge, Gregor Mendel Professor of Genetics and Medicine, HMS, and professor of medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), will use the tools of synthetic biology to create a copy of the human proteome in small pieces, with the goal of identifying parts of the proteome recognized by antibodies in people with Type 1 diabetes.
Richard Lee, professor of medicine, BWH, and Douglas Melton, Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Natural Sciences, Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), will endeavor to engineer cells that can monitor blood glucose, allowing patients to strive for normal control without having to prick their fingers frequently to test their blood.
Towia Libermann, associate professor of medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, will identify new genomic biomarkers in the blood of mice that model human Type 1 diabetes prior to the destruction of pancreatic islet cells and the resulting onset of disease. These biomarkers, once validated in patients, will enable monitoring of pre-diabetic patients and others at high risk for the disease so that preemptive therapy can be applied.
David Mooney, Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering, FAS/School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Kai Wucherpfennig, professor of neurology, DFCI, plan to use novel nanomaterials that will leverage regulatory T cells’ ability to inhibit immune system attacks on insulin-producing cells and thus prevent Type 1 diabetes.
Martin Yarmush, senior lecturer on surgery and bioengineering (formerly the Helen Andrus Benedict Professor), HMS, and director, Center for Engineering in Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, will take advantage of molecular biology and microfabrication techniques in order to detect autoantibody levels with great sensitivity. This would enable the detection of the onset of Type 1 diabetes far earlier, allowing the use of interventions designed to deter disease progression.
Qiao Zhou, assistant professor of stem cell and regenerative biology, FAS, and Jason Gaglia, instructor in pathology, Joslin Diabetes Center, aims to convert non-beta cells in the pancreas into fully functional beta cells with normal insulin release, thus replenishing populations destroyed in patients with Type 1 diabetes.
