$918,828
Diabetes Evaluation in Washington (DEW-IT) Study
Principal Scientist, Pacific Northwest Diabetes Research
Institute (PDRI) and Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Washington
Dr. Hagopian completed both his medical and research doctorates at the University of Chicago, and medical residency and scientific and clinical fellowship training in endocrinology at the University of Washington. Prior to coming to PNRI he was Director of the Pancreatic Islet Satellite Core of the Diabetes Endocrinology Research Center at the University of Washington. He is an Attending Physician at the University of Washington Medical Center and sees patients in the UW Endocrinology and Diabetes clinics. He serves on several grant review committees at the National Institutes of Health, and has published over 50 manuscripts. His major research interests lie in the immunogenetics of human type 1 diabetes, prediction of prediabetes, pathogenetic mechanisms in islets and immune cells, and the use of immunotherapy to prevent progression to clinical disease. He helps direct several large translational studies of Type 1 diabetes, including the DEW-IT study of Type 1 diabetes prediction, the TEDDY study of Type 1 diabetes environmental triggers, and the ABATE and PROTEGE studies of immunoprevention therapies. The overall goal is to prevent childhood Type 1 diabetes.
Type 1 (Juvenile) Diabetes (T1D) is one of the leading chronic childhood diseases in the US. It has significant morbidity both at onset and later. Annual medical costs associated with the disease are staggering. The current health care system lacks a practical, population-based T1D prediction strategy, which is necessary to provide early diagnosis and identify an at-risk cohort appropriate for intervention therapies. Our research project has the potential to implement such a program by identifying children in Washington State who are developing the disease and to educate them on the signs and symptoms before onset. This will minimize illness and medical cost at diagnosis. To do this, we have perfected exciting new technology using inexpensive genetic screening in cooperation with our Washington State Department of Health Newborn Screening Program followed by mail-based follow-up autoantibody testing of children at risk. We feel that this project offers an excellent chance to transit T1D preclinical prediction to the public and private health care system. Further, there exists the potential to lower health care costs for WA State businesses and for the DSHS. This proposal also will create a cohort to test new therapies to ultimately prevent T1D from coming at all, and we hope to energize T1D clinical research within the state's thriving academic research community, and potential diabetes prevention therapies among the state's large biotech sector. Overall, we hope that this strategy will eventually benefit the four million children born in the US each year, and ultimately children around the world.
Grant Update
“The DEW-IT 2 study strives to produce an effective, cost-efficient method to predict type 1 diabetes, suitable for use with newborn screening and in doctor’s offices. We want to show that screening all kids for risk of type 1 diabetes at birth is not only possible, but also cost-effective, and a medically valuable activity. It is expected to lessen sickness at onset, since studies show that more and more kids are getting children type 1 diabetes. Those found to be at risk in the DEW-IT 2 study are followed with more doctor’s office-based testing to further measure their risk. For those at high risk, parents are educated about signs and symptoms to watch for if type 1 diabetes begins. ”
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