[Orlando, FL] An Orlando medical partnership hopes to one day cure diabetes, which currently costs the United States hundreds of billions of dollars in direct and indirect costs, according to the American Diabetes Association.
Researchers at Florida Hospital – Sanford-Burnham Translational Research Institute (TRI) for Metabolism and Diabetes say that they have the tools, facilities and know-how to beat diabetes and metabolism-related diseases that now affect nearly one-in-three Americans.
They feel that by personalizing care and treatment for diabetes and obesity, researchers can “crack the code” on the epidemic. Plus, they have a secret weapon – Dr. Steven R. Smith, a diabetes expert and scientific director at TRI.
“It is my professional goal to cure diabetes,” said Dr. Smith. “One of the key goals of the research being conducted at the TRI is to broaden the basic understanding of the complex genetic and molecular causes of obesity, diabetes and associated cardiovascular complications.”
Helping Dr. Smith and his team crack the code is 27-year-old psychology student Alexandra Fields-Garrity, who is overweight and pre-diabetic. What makes her case so unique and potentially helpful to researchers is that she has a twin.
“My twin sister is the complete opposite of me in terms of weight and health issues, yet we share a very close genetic make-up,” Fields-Garrity said. “I enrolled in a research trial at the TRI so my information can help the researchers understand what makes my sister and me so different.”
It doesn’t hurt that the TRI has a shiny new 54,000 sq. ft. facility equipped with a state-of-the-art research clinic, advanced imaging technology and a biorepository for sample collection and storage.
Photo: Florida Hospital
Dr. Steven Smith and research trial participant Alex Fields-Garrity
“We hope to usher in a new era of personalized approaches preventing, diagnosing and treating these diseases because we know it is people like Alex who will benefit from our discoveries,” says Dr. Smith.
But the big news over at the TRI is the Calorimetry Laboratory which contains smaller controlled rooms allowing researchers to “analyze the air in the room to measure energy expenditure and the type of food a person is burning without the person having the discomfort of being hooked up to machinery.”
That’s an industry first in terms of having rooms specifically designed for precise measurements of energy expenditure by patients at rest or during exercise.
“Our partnership with Florida Hospital exemplifies a new, translational research model that will speed the development of personalized therapies,” said Dr. John Reed, CEO of Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute.
“The application of our advanced research technologies to clinical studies at the TRI has the potential to revolutionize health care through the discovery of molecular signatures of disease,” Reed said through a statement.
With Sanford-Burnham labs working in conjunction with the clinical studies over at the new TRI center, Dr. Smith and others will get a rare “bench-to-bedside research continuum.” That along with data sharing will bring discoveries to fruition quicker, say researchers and staff.
The first target of all of this medical might is orexin, the appetite-inducing hormone that is produced in the brain. This little wonder “appears to resolve obesity without changes in food consumption or elevation in physical activity,” says the TRI team.
By: Mark Christopher/Sunshine Slate
Lead image: Dr. Steven Smith adds the final rung to the DNA double helix constructed to symbolize how the TRI will seeks cures on an individual, genetic level (photo: Florida Hospital)
