ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 11, 1997 TAG: 9704110072
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NORFOLK
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Eli Lilly and Co. will fund further research on the discovery made by scientists at the Eastern Virginia School of Medicine.
Eastern Virginia Medical School scientists say they have found a gene that could lead to a cure for diabetes and announced Thursday that drug maker Eli Lilly and Co. will fund further research.
EVMS Diabetes Institute researchers have isolated a gene that apparently triggers the growth of cells in the pancreas that create insulin, a hormone the body needs to process sugar. Diabetes results from the inability to make or use insulin.
In his first public acknowledgement that research had identified the gene, research team leader Aaron I. Vinik said he believes the discovery could be used to treat diabetics, identify people genetically prone to diabetes and even prevent it.
But years of research will be needed before doctors can apply the knowledge to fighting the disease that afflicts more than 16 million Americans and kills about 150,000 each year, Vinik cautioned.
The funding agreement with Eli Lilly gives the Indianapolis-based company sole rights to a patent on the gene and the gene's products discovered by EVMS and its partner in the research project, McGill University in Montreal.
Officials at the Diabetes Institute refused to say how much money they will receive from Eli Lilly, the nation's leading supplier of insulin. The drug company says its average cost to discover and develop a new drug is $360 million.
The partnership is one of several research efforts that have reported diabetes breakthroughs.
At the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, researchers reported in October that scientists there had eliminated diabetes symptoms in mice by implanting into them pituitary cells genetically engineered to produce insulin.
Results of the Diabetes Institute's research have been reviewed by a panel of scientists and will be published next month in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Doctors at EVMS and McGill have named the gene INGAP, for Islets Neogenesis Associated Protein. Using a chemical soup that apparently includes proteins created by the gene, scientists have been able to reverse the effects of diabetes in hamsters. The researchers want to develop medicines that could do the same in humans.
The therapy might involve using a protein that is created from the gene's blueprint, or it could eventually use gene therapy, a still largely theoretical treatment in which a gene's function is altered to fix medical problems caused by genetic defects or abnormalities.
The INGAP gene tells the body to grow extra beta cells, which make insulin, a hormone that helps the body process sugar and other carbohydrates. The beta cells sit in clumps of islets on the pancreas, a gland behind the stomach.
The gene apparently works while a fetus grows in the womb, sending out a protein that tells the body to make beta cells, said Vinik. But after birth, the gene switches off and usually stays off.
People without diabetes get along fine with their allotment of beta cells. A tiny percentage of cells die off and are replaced each month. Diabetes upsets the balance.
One form of diabetes kills the beta cells. In type 1 diabetes, which accounts for only about 5 percent of all cases, the immune system mistakes beta cells for foreign invaders and destroys them.
The more common type of diabetes, type 2, occurs because the body doesn't get enough insulin - either because the beta cells don't make enough or because the body doesn't process it well. Over time, the beta cells weaken under the strain and sometimes die.
Vinik says the discovery might help people who suffer from type 1 diabetes and type 2 victims who can't control their problem with diet and exercise.
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