The latest issue of Discoveries in Diabetes is now available in print and online.
Results tagged “Discoveries in Diabetes”
Pastor Constance “Connie” Olson worked 70-hour weeks, tending to the needs—spiritual and otherwise—of her congregation. She was also a type 1 diabetic, suff ering from hypoglycemic unawareness. This complication meant that she didn’t experience early warning signs of dangerously low blood sugar—such as sweating, dizziness, and extreme hunger—causing her to unexpectedly have seizures and lose consciousness.
Siobhan O’Brien Olson grew up understanding the importance of community giving. In fact, her family’s Alice M. O’Brien Foundation has been supporting numerous charities in Minnesota for 60 years. Nearly eight years ago, the foundation established the O’Brien BioBank for lung research at the University of Minnesota—just one of numerous gifts the foundation has made to support medical research at the University.
Diabetes never takes a break.
For people living with type 1 diabetes, the task of monitoring blood glucose levels an administering insulin is always at the forefront of their minds. It’s something they must do multiple times a day, every day.
But University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic scientists are working together to build an artificial pancreas that would eliminate this burden.
University of Minnesota transplant surgeon David E. R. Sutherland, M.D., Ph.D., received the 2012 Medawar Prize in July at the 24th International Congress of the Transplantation Society in Berlin, Germany. The award is considered the world’s highest recognition for contributions to the field of transplantation.
It wasn’t love at first sight when Rudy Dankwort met his future wife, Kathryn. She was 7 and he was a teen. Kathryn was his best friend’s little sister. But the two fell in love 11 years later and married, beginning a 37-year union that lasted until her death in 2009.
Although Kathryn Dankwort died shortly after being diagnosed with esophageal cancer, she had endured type 1 diabetes since she was 12 years old.
Your annual gifts supporting research at the University of Minnesota have a real impact on treatments for patients living with disease.
Did you know that you can leave a legacy that will make a difference after your lifetime?
Scientist Meri Firpo, Ph.D., spends countless hours in her University of Minnesota lab intensely focused on stem cell research that could lead to a cure for type 1 diabetes.
But sometimes, she says, it’s the ideas that arise outside of the lab—after work—that provide a fresh perspective on research questions and, ultimately, lead to new discoveries.
One of Firpo’s latest diabetes research projects started with a conversation she had at a grad student recruiting party. Thanks to that chat, Firpo and University cancer biologist Anindya Bagchi, Ph.D., are teaming up to find a way to protect insulin-producing beta (or islet) cells—the ones damaged in diabetes.
In the wild, lions rely on their prides—communities in the animal kingdom—for protection, food, and other types of support. Members of Minnesota Lions clubs foster a similar sense of community by committing to causes that help others, such as cure-focused diabetes research.
The Minnesota Lions Diabetes Foundation, Inc. awarded a $50,000 grant last fall to University of Minnesota scientists, expanding the group’s commitment to diabetes research—specifically homing in on the study of kidney disease linked to type 2 diabetes.
The Decade of Discovery, a major initiative of the Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics, has hired an executive director and awarded three research grants totaling $1.86 million to bring the University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic closer to the initiative’s goal: finding a cure for diabetes.
