The Annual Grodsky award, supported by Diabetes Center at UCSF, was presented at the Western Region Islet Study Group (WRISG) meeting this year to Steve Kahn, MB, ChB, Director of University of Washington Diabetes Research Center, whose talk was “Clinical Observations and Science: Including Some Lessons Gerry Taught Me.” Present with Gerold Grodsky and Steve Kahn was Lori Sussel, Director of Basic and Translational Research at the Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes at University of Colorado.

This year's UCSF Diabetes Academy, hosted by UCSF Foundation, met virtually on October 6, 2021, uniting clinicians and scientists from across UCSF campuses to share the latest advances in diabetes research and care.

Arabella Young PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in Bluestone lab, was recently named a UC President's Lindau Nobel Meeting Fellow for 2021—along with four other esteemed peers from UCSF, out of thirty students across all ten UC Campuses—who were nominated based on demonstrated excellence and engagement in their field of research, enthusiastic support from advisers and mentors, and evidence of their commitment to interdisciplinary scientific work.

The FDA Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee has recommended for approval Teplizumab, a humanized anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody shown in a randomized clinical trial to delay development of type 1 diabetes in children as young as age 8 years after a single 14-day course of the drug.

Adélaïde Bernard, a graduate student in the Metabolic Biology program at UC Berkeley at Vaisse lab in Diabetes Center, was awarded first place in the 2021 Berkeley Grad Slam for her presentation titled, "Hungry Unicorns: How Antennas in Your Neurons Control Appetite," also placing third in the UC wide

Beatson

Diabetes Center's James Lee, MD, has been named a recipient of the 2021 Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy Early Career Researchers awards, along with five other exceptional scholars from UCSF, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, and Memorial Sloan Kettering, receiving in total almost $3 million of funding. The goal of the program is to empower ambitious researchers to pursue their boldest ideas to transform the immunotherapy and cell and gene therapy landscape for cancer patients.

UCSF has a bold vision to create a first-of-its-kind clinical diagnostic center that will advance precision diabetes research. The goal is to provide a central resource for families with type 1 diabetes and other heritable immunological conditions to receive personalized care and genetic counseling. This crucial multi-disciplinary effort will work to unravel the mysteries behind complex immunological disorders and exemplifies the translational research, from bench lab to bedside, being conducted by UCSF’s clinician-scientists across the campuses.

Originally published in Endpoint News, by John Carroll

The diabetes drug Teplizumab has taken another step forward in the long, painfully slow trek out of the research and development wilderness, and the next stop could be the FDA.

Not to be confused with type 2 diabetes, the most common form of diabetes in which your body does not use insulin properly, type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease which causes the destruction of insulin producing pancreatic beta cells. Patients with type 1 diabetes require insulin injections for survival. While there are multiple drugs designed to treat type 2 diabetes, type 1 is controlled with insulin - an onerous burden especially when one considers that this disease often begins in childhood.