“The CDP gives scientists the opportunity to work toward a common goal that one is unlikely to reach alone in a reasonable amount of time. ”
Julie Kerr Conte-Pattou, Ph.D., University Hospital, Lille, France
Angelo P. Creticos, President of the Washington Square Health Foundation, shares a short history of the Chicago Diabetes Project.
Howard Nochumson, Executive Director of the Washington Square Health Foundation, describes the foundation's relationship with the CDP.
In the last 20 years, a vast amount of scientific knowledge has been gathered about how insulin-producing cells develop, function and survive in the normal human body and how they become compromised and destroyed in diabetic patients. In recent years, interest in diabetes has intensified because it is nearing epidemic proportions. In 1985 there were 30 million diabetics, and today that number has skyrocketed to more than 197 million. By 2025, diabetes is likely to affect 300 million people worldwide.
To hasten the possibility of researchers finding a functional cure for diabetes, the Washington Square Health Foundation developed the idea of having researchers from around the world come together to form the Chicago Diabetes Project, a group of highly qualified scientists and their teams who committed themselves to achieving a functional cure for diabetes as soon as possible.
The Chicago Diabetes Project began in 2004 and has become a marquee medical research initiative for the University of Illinois Foundation, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1935.
Dr. José Oberholzer, the coordinator and director of cell transplantation at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, is the director of the Chicago Diabetes Project. Dr. Oberholzer and the other Chicago Diabetes Project leaders strongly believe that the scientific community has all the necessary ingredients to make cell-based therapy an option for the majority of diabetic patients.
Chicago Diabetes Project team members are using a collaborative model to achieve a cure. By freely exchanging knowledge, team members have created a scientific alliance between institutions, a coalition that will provide for more direct and noncompetitive funding to accelerate finding a functional cure for diabetes.
Your contribution will help doctors and scientists all over the world to bring an end to diabetes of all types. Together we can brighten the lives of people across the globe.
