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| Quarterly update from the DMRC
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DMRC Community,
We have so much to celebrate as we enter a summer of recovery. Amidst all of the challenges and hard times in the last 15+ months, our community participated in meaningful scientific discovery in metabolic health, community-engaged research on the prevention and management of diabetes, and program development to create a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive environment in which to conduct diabetes and metabolism research here at the U.
Accomplishments include:
- The submission of a P30 application to become an NIDDK-funded “Diabetes Research Center”
- The state appropriation of $500,000 annually to support diabetes programing through the Driving Out Diabetes Initiative, including The Wellness Bus, the school-based and family prevention programs, and the Intensive Diabetes Education and Support (IDEAS) program.
- The successful development and launch of several equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) programing, including the “Summer Research Program in Microbiology, Immunology, and Metabolism” in partnership with the department of Pathology, and the Rising Stars in Metabolism series that highlighted scientific excellence and diversity.
We in the DMRC join with UofU Health to commit to move forward, post pandemic, in an approach that consists of three phases: recognize, recover, and rebuild. We hope you will take time this summer to begin to refill your reserves. Learn more about this approach in Dr. Good’s “Good Notes.”
Have a great summer!
Jared Rutter & Scott Summers, DMRC Co-Directors
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NIDDK P30 "Diabetes Research Center" - Application Submitted!
Colleagues,
On May 20th, the Utah Diabetes and Metabolism Research Center (UDMRC) submitted a proposal to become an NIDDK-funded Diabetes Research Center. The application was 1132 pages and included biosketches, summary reports, and research statistics on 91 faculty, as well as descriptions of four biomedical research cores, our pilot and feasibility programs, our administrative structure, and our overall approach, accomplishments, and philosophy. My colleagues on the UDMRC leadership team (Jared Rutter, Bridget Hughes, and Sara Salmon) and I are extraordinarily grateful for all the help constructing and polishing this massive document.
We have so many people to thank.
- Jessica Kieper, Dan Burnham, Kami McNeill, Rachel Tennyson, and Christine Farley from the SVPHS Research Unit collected, analyzed, edited, and summarized an enormous amount of data on our grant and research activity.
- The grant key personnel and support faculty, James Cox, Marcus Pezzolesi, Mark Yandell, MaryAnne Karren, Angie Fagerlin, JD Smith, Andrea Wallace, Will Holland, Sihem Boudina, Katsu Funai, Kelly Baron, Simon Fisher, Stavros Drakos, Niru Ramkumar, Dave Symons, Maria Bettini, and Kevin Whitehead, prepared excellent proposals describing our four research cores and our pilot and feasibility program.
- Christina Yong did an outstanding job editing every word and punctuation mark in the document.
- Tara Mleynek generated a large number of creative new figures.
- Our OSP colleagues Todd Bjorklund and Kristen Kinjo helped us collate this into an NIH-acceptable format.
- Numerous Utah leaders and external collaborators wrote strongly supportive letters: Will Dere, Michael Good, Karen Eilbeck, Simon Fisher, June Round, Maija Holsti, John Inadomi, David Perrin, Wes Sundquist, Lonnie Bullard, Don Stirling Rachel Hess, John Phillips, Andy Weyrich, Philipp Scherer, Martin Young, Steve Rich, Roger Altizer, Tim Brusseau, Vik Deshmukh, Ken Kawamoto, Traci Thompson, and Dave Wetter.
- Several of our close colleagues gave thoughtful, constructive reviews and recommendations that greatly improved our application: Chris Hill, Cindy Berg, Rachel Hess, Molly Conroy, Randy Peterson, Corrine Welt, Will Dere, Robin Shaw, Katsu Funai, Andrea Wallace
- And the UDMRC Faculty (YOU) promptly responded to emails and provided data, enriching the application with a large number of impressive accomplishments and discoveries.
THANK YOU!!!!
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Schematic depicting the location of the UDMRCand the catchment area for Utah Diabetes and Endocrinology Center.
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Schematic depicting the UDMRC structureincluding its interest group pillars and foundational cores.
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We are very pleased with the product, which revealed important strides since our first application just two years ago:
- Since 2019, we recruited 12 new faculty members with outstanding diabetes or metabolism research programs to the UofU.
- Since 2019, we achieved a 26% increase in peer-reviewed extramural grants supporting diabetes and metabolism investigations. In total, our extramural funding in support of diabetes and metabolism research topped $43M in direct costs per year.
- Since 2019, we received tremendous new financial support from the SVPHS, the state legislature, and our wonderful donors, including the Miller, Bullard and Hatch families.
- Since 2019, we renewed four NIDDK-funded training grants
- Since 2019, we continued to show an excellent return on investment in our pilot and feasibility grants, 51% of which generate new extramural research grants
- Since 2019, we showed substantive increases in membership and activities of our two Interest Groups: Metabolism and Health Behaviors. The researchers in these highly active units are having a transformative impact on diabetes and metabolic health, which is evident from numerous high impact publications.
- Since 2019, we created several new DMRC activities aiming to make excellence inclusive.
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These and other accomplishments contributed to a much stronger application. We basically told the NIH reviewers exactly who we are…because we think “who we are” is pretty great.
Nonetheless, competition will be stiffer this year. Only four slots are available, and we are competing with many of the most highly respected current or prior DRCs in the country. Candidly, we’ll be surprised if we aren’t submitting another application again in 2023. We will be prepared to do so!
We are honored to work with such a wonderful group of esteemed and collaborative scientists. Thanks for helping with this application, and thanks for making the UDMRC such a wonderful place to live and work.
Best regards,
Scott, Jared, Bridget and Sara
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Our body’s relationship with bacteria is complex. While infectious bacteria can cause illness, our gut is also teaming with “good” bacteria that aids nutrition and helps keep us healthy. But even the “good” can have bad effects if these bacteria end up in tissues and organs where they’re not supposed to be.
Now, research published in Nature reveals insights into how the body maintains this balance. Investigations with mice demonstrate that early life is a critical time when the immune system learns to recognize gut bacteria and sets up surveillance that keeps them in check. Defects in these mechanisms could help explain why the immune system sometimes attacks good bacteria in the wrong place, causing the chronic inflammation that’s responsible for inflammatory bowel disease, the study’s authors say.
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In people with chronic heart failure, the heart doesn’t pump blood as effectively as it should. This leaves the patient weak, tired, and short of breath. The disease is life-threatening, and around half of patients diagnosed with chronic heart failure die within 5 years.
Some patients benefit from an implanted pump called a left ventricular assist device (LVAD). This device boosts the amount of blood pushed out of the heart with each heartbeat, taking over some of the work for the weakened organ. The LVAD can be a “bridge to transplant” for patients awaiting a new heart, or it can be implanted permanently as a lifetime therapy.
Surprisingly, in some LVAD recipients, the device enabled their own heart to recover and grow stronger, but no one knew how this happened. Now, researchers at U of U Health have uncovered the molecular interactions that help these hearts recover. Published in Cell Metabolism, the finding could help develop new medications to treat heart failure earlier, before patients require an LVAD or a transplant.
Read more here.
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All too often, it seems, health care is focused on pills, procedures, and prognoses. Unfortunately, this approach frequently overlooks what is going on in patients’ lives outside of clinics and hospitals that could adversely affect their health or deter them from seeking health care services. As a result, many of these patients are falling through the cracks of the U.S. health care system, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an effort to better understand and find possible solutions for this dilemma, the National Institutes of Health has awarded a $2.7 million, four-year grant to Andrea Wallace, Ph.D., R.N., chair of health systems and community-based care in the University of Utah College of Nursing. The research will explore different strategies for getting patients help for social needs such as housing, childcare, food, and transportation—and whether doing so improves health outcomes during the pandemic and in other situations.
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NEW PUBLICATIONS - abridged
- Depner CM, Melanson EL, Eckel RH, Higgins JA, Bergman BC, Perreault L, Knauer OA, Birks BR, Wright KP Jr.Effects of ad libitum food intake, insufficient sleep and weekend recovery sleep on energy balance. Sleep. 2021 Jun 1:zsab136. doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsab136.
- Agrawal R, Reno CM, Sharma S, Christensen C, Huang Y, Fisher SJ.Insulin Action in the Brain regulates both Central and Peripheral Functions. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2021 May 31. doi: 10.1152/ajpendo.00642.2020.
- Baucom KJW, Pershing ML, Dwenger KM, Karasawa M, Cohan JN, Ozanne EM.Barriers and Facilitators to Enrollment and Retention in the National Diabetes Prevention Program: Perspectives of Women and Clinicians Within a Health System. Womens Health Rep (New Rochelle). 2021 May 11;2(1):133-141. doi: 10.1089/whr.2020.0102. eCollection 2021.
- Jun S, Cowan AE, Dodd KW, Tooze JA, Gahche JJ, Eicher-Miller HA, Guenther PM, Dwyer JT, Potischman N, Bhadra A, Forman MR, Bailey RL.Association of food insecurity with dietary intakes and nutritional biomarkers among US children, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2011-2016. Am J Clin Nutr. 2021 May 8:nqab113. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/nqab113.
- Sharma A, Greene DN, Chambliss AB, Farnsworth CW, French D, Herman DS, Kavsak PA, Merrill AE, Margaret Lo SY, Lyon ME, Winston-McPherson G, Pearson LN, SoRelle JA, Waring AC, Schmidt RL.The effect of the Covid-19 shutdown on glycemic testing and control. Clin Chim Acta. 2021 Apr 28;519:148-152. doi: 10.1016/j.cca.2021.04.018.
- Thompson HJ, Levitt JO, McGinley JN, Chandler P, Guenther PM, Huybrechts I, Playdon MC.Measuring Dietary Botanical Diversity as a Proxy for Phytochemical Exposure. Nutrients. 2021 Apr 14;13(4):1295. doi: 10.3390/nu13041295.
- Trott DW, Islam MT, Buckley DJ, Donato AJ, Dutson T, Sorensen ES, Cai J, Gogulamudi VR, Phuong TTT, Lesniewski LA.T lymphocyte depletion ameliorates age-related metabolic impairments in mice. Geroscience. 2021 Apr 24. doi: 10.1007/s11357-021-00368-4.
- Halliday TM, White MH, Hild AK, Conroy MB, Melanson EL, Cornier MA.Appetite and Energy Intake Regulation in Response to Acute Exercise. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2021 Apr 7. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000002678.
- Craig JC, Broxterman RM, Cerbie JF, La Salle DT, Roundy CS, Jarrett CL, Richardson RS, Trinity JD.The dynamic adjustment of mean arterial pressure during exercise: a potential tool for discerning cardiovascular health status. J Appl Physiol (1985). 2021 May 1;130(5):1544-1554. doi: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00057.2021. Epub 2021 Apr 8.
- Smith JD, Berkel C, Carroll AJ, Fu E, Grimm KJ, Mauricio AM, Rudo-Stern J, Winslow E, Dishion TJ, Jordan N, Atkins DC, Narayanan SS, Gallo C, Bruening MM, Wilson C, Lokey F, Samaddar K.Health behaviour outcomes of a family based intervention for paediatric obesity in primary care: A randomized type II hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial. Pediatr Obes. 2021 Mar 30:e12780. doi: 10.1111/ijpo.12780.
- Lazaro-Guevara J, Fierro-Morales J, Wright AH, Gunville R, Simeone C, Frodsham SG, Pezzolesi MH, Zaffino CA, Al-Rabadi L, Ramkumar N, Pezzolesi MG.Targeted Next-Generation Sequencing Identifies Pathogenic Variants in Diabetic Kidney Disease. Am J Nephrol. 2021;52(3):239-249. doi: 10.1159/000514578. Epub 2021 Mar 26.
- Choi RH, Tatum SM, Symons JD, Summers SA, Holland WL.Ceramides and other sphingolipids as drivers of cardiovascular disease. Nat Rev Cardiol. 2021 Mar 26. doi: 10.1038/s41569-021-00536-1.
- Nicholson RJ, Poss AM, Maschek JA, Cox JE, Hopkins PN, Hunt SC, Playdon MC, Holland WL, Summers SA.Characterizing a common CERS2 polymorphism in a mouse model of metabolic disease and in subjects from the Utah CAD Study. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2021 Mar 11:dgab155. doi: 10.1210/clinem/dgab155.
- Mahmassani ZS, McKenzie AI, Petrocelli JJ, De Hart NM, Fix DK, Kelly JJ, Baird LM, Howard MT, Drummond MJ.Reduced Physical Activity Alters the Leucine-Stimulated Translatome in Aged Skeletal Muscle. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2021 Mar 11:glab077. doi: 10.1093/gerona/glab077.
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Opportunities
Access the Cardiovascular Genetics Cohorts- The DMRC has acquired a large number of clinical serum samples from researchers from the prior Division of Cardiovascular Genetics. These include clinical studies relating to body habitus (e.g. studies of extreme familial thinness, familial obesity, gastric bypass), premature coronary artery disease, heart failure, diabetes, etc. These collections are indexed with electronic health records and contain extensive information about clinical outcomes. If you would like to discuss ways to collaborate and use these samples in your study, please contact Scott Summers.
New metabolism workshops!- Has someone at the U approached you for feedback on a project involving metabolism? Contact Bridget or Sara and we will help organize a workshop with multiple investigators to consult.
- Take advantage of the opportunity to have an external peer review of any extramural multi-year grants totaling >$500K for applications that focus on diabetes, obesity, or metabolism. Investigators must have already secured one internal reviewer to review their grant application. Find out more here.
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