NDRI AWARDED $7.6 MILLION GRANT FROM NIH FOR THE NEXT FIVE YEARS TO FUND CORE INITIATIVES
PHILADELPHIA (November XX, 2008) --- NDRI, the National Disease Research Interchange, announced that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a $7.6 million grant to NDRI to enable the human tissue science organization to expand its core mission to collect, process, and distribute donated human tissue to hundreds of leading research facilities throughout the US, for the next five years. Since 1980, NDRI has served a vital need providing some 5,000 scientists with more than 300,000 human biomaterials, leading to more than 2,500 papers published in scholarly journals on diseases from diabetes to cancer to HIV and rare diseases. Today NDRI is the leading national organization that connects donated human tissue with the research scientists who need it to develop new therapies and cures for human diseases. NDRI serves almost every disease imaginable.
“We are very excited about the $7.6 million dollar funding from the NIH to NDRI. This award is especially noteworthy in the face of NIH budget crunches. The funding acknowledges the high esteem the NIH and their reviewers have for the outstanding efforts of NDRI. This funding will help sustain and enhance NDRI’s efforts to provide the many investigators who depend on tissue/cell samples from us with the highest quality and quantity of material,” said Hal E. Broxmeyer, Chairman of the Board of Directors, NDRI, Distinguished Professor, Chairman & Mary Margaret Walther Professor of Microbiology/Immunology, Indiana University School of Medicine.
After a rigorous peer review, the grant was awarded through five NIH institutes, a “Multi-Institute Initiative” including NIDDK, the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases, NEI, the National Eye Institute, NIAMS, the National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, NIAID, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and NHLBI, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. The core grant is from NCRR, the National Center for Research Resources. This NIH grant is especially important in this era of medical research budget cuts and reductions in funding.
Some 20,000 tissues pass through NDRI each year to about 500 scientists, at about 250 of the finest university-based research centers. The role that NDRI plays in science today has grown tremendously with the number of tissues, derivatives and initiatives they provide, including their “Stem Cell Initiative”, providing vital stem cell material from discarded birth tissues. NDRI is able to provide thousands of cancer tumor samples each year helping support some of the most important cancer studies in the country. NDRI has special projects in type 1 and type 2 diabetes and supports eye disease research in retinopathy, glaucoma, macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, and other eye diseases. NDRI administers a large collection of uniquely valuable families within a genetics registry. This program provides DNA, cell lines and medical history data to scientists for the genetics of thyroid disease, type 1 diabetes and autoimmune diseases.
“The way to study human disease is to study human tissue,” states Lee Ducat, founder and president of NDRI and founder of JDRF (the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation). “Before NDRI existed, scientists could not get human tissue easily or in any continuous way for their studies. In those days, most human tissue was trashed or incinerated. NDRI has created a new paradigm turning human tissue donated into a national treasure. We designed all of the original systems that provide human tissue to scientists with the help of funding from PEW Memorial Trust. The growth of NDRI means to researchers that they can access just about any tissue of the human body needed for their studies. This NIH grant of $7.6 million makes it possible for NDRI to continue this critically important role in the medical discovery process. NDRI’s service has become literally indispensable to scientific discovery.”
Ducat founded NDRI in 1980 to provide scientists with pancreatic tissue for diabetes research and islet cell transplant. At that time, no national organization provided human biomaterials for research purposes. Since then, NDRI has become renowned globally for its indispensable role as the lead organization which matches scientists to human cells, tissues and organs for their research projects. NDRI is the only organization which provides tissue from HIV-positive donors to scientific studies to investigate the various aspects of AIDS, and how it manifests in the body. Funding from this NIH grant will support studies which track the HIV virus in the body to find where HIV hides in the systems of asymptomatic patients. This NDRI initiative procures tissues from symptomatic donors to better understand the prognosis of this deadly virus. More than three million deaths occur annually as a result of HIV, a rate that researchers are calling epidemic proportions.
About NDRI
NDRI (the National Disease Research Interchange) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, established in 1980 by Lee Ducat, also the founder of JDRF (the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation), to provide scientists access to human cells, tissues and organs which would have been thrown away and are now saved for critical research projects. In the past 20 years, NDRI has served some 5,000 scientists with more than 300,000 human biomaterials, leading to more than 2,500 papers published in scholarly journals on diseases from diabetes to cancer to HIV and rare diseases.
Funded in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NDRI provides biomaterials to more than 200 of the nation’s most prominent academic-based research centers including the Harvard Medical School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, Stanford University, and Thomas Jefferson University, among others. NDRI also provides tissues to government agencies and grantees including the NIH, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, The Centers for Disease Control, and to some of the nation’s top Pharma, Biotech R&D programs. For more information as to how to become a “Tissue for Research Donor”, please call 877-221-NDRI (6914) or visit www.ndriresource.org.
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Note to editors: For specific examples how NDRI is utilizing the NIH grant, please see the following pages.
Putting the NIH Grant into Action
National Rare Disease Human Tissue Resource
This NIH support over the next five years will enable the growth and development of the NDRI “National Rare Disease Human Tissue Resource.” NDRI has built a parallel, “National Rare Disease Resource” serving literally hundreds of rare disease scientists. This program has collected thousands of donated rare disease tissues from donors throughout the country. The NDRI “Online Catalog of Biospecimens” holds over 3,300 rare disease tissues, which can be accessed easily and instantly by scientists studying some 120 rare diseases. In addition, most of these rare diseases do not have animal models useful for research purposes, so the human tissues are vitally needed by scientists for their studies. There are 15 Voluntary Health Organizations joined in the “NDRI Rare Disease Alliance,” helping to support and grow research among the various rare diseases.
National LAM Human Tissue Resource
This new NIH funding will support the building and development of NDRI’s “National LAM Human Tissue Resource.” With funding from NHLBI, the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, the “LAM Human Tissue Resource” will grow larger, to help better understand this heartbreaking disease. “NDRI is the perfect partner, and I can’t overstate how vital they are to this mission. It’s mission critical! It’s lifesaving!” states Amy Farber, Executive Director of the LAM Treatment Alliance and a LAM patient. LAM is a disease that affects women in their childbearing years and claims the lives of 250,000 worldwide. Patients afflicted with LAM progressively lose their ability to breathe due to an excessive growth of cysts in their lungs and other organs. There are no animal models for study in LAM disease, nor have any treatments been found except for lung transplant. NDRI has over 1,000 LAM tissues available to scientists in the NDRI “Online Biomaterials Catalog”, which can be accessed easily and instantly by scientists on NDRI’s website.
The fight against Cystic Fibrosis
In addition to the grants from the National Institutes of Health, NDRI holds grants from some 20 Voluntary Health Organizations, including the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and JDRF, The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. In the fight against cystic fibrosis (CF), NDRI was able to design systems which target and retrieve CF lungs when a lung transplant is performed on a CF patient, which are then shipped to scientists for research studies. The result has been a major medical breakthrough. Cystic fibrosis lungs retrieved by NDRI and shipped to Vertex, a global biotechnology company, at the direction of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, have been used to develop two new drugs designed to combat the disease at its biological root (i.e., aberrant function of a protein known as CFTR). The drug furtherest along in clinical trials, seems to improve lung function in CF patients and improves two biological measures of CFTR function. Chris Penland, PhD, Director of Research, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has commented: “The most important contribution that NDRI makes is their ability to reach out into the community and acquire tissues to help drug discovery efforts. Almost every primary cell used in the research to make these discoveries was from a lung NDRI acquired.”
JDRF, The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation has funded NDRI for two very exciting projects. Scientists were unable to get the pancreas they needed for these two projects. They needed pancreas for “nPOD” from Type I donors, for scientific study. The other project was the tracking of donors from The Joslin Diabetes Center who had Type 1 Diabetes for 40 years or more . Under the direction of George King, MD, Director of Research, they will assess what might be different in these donors who stay healthy for more than 40 years with type 1 diabetes. Mark Atkinson, PhD, Director for this JDRF Grant, “nPOD”, is analyzing pancreas of donors with type 1 diabetes. “Our project with NDRI is probably one of the top two or three efforts in diabetes research today. This is really, really important research and I’m thankful for the opportunities NDRI has given us. NDRI is absolutely key to the success of this mission,” said Mark Atkinson, PhD., Professor of Medicine, Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine University of Florida, Gainesville.
Partnering with the National Eye Institute
More than 3,000 human eyes and eye parts are donated each year to science through NDRI systems. The collection of this precious tissue is made possible with the help of funding from NEI, the National Eye Institute. After the cornea is taken for transplant, NDRI coordinators collect the donated eye tissue, the valuable retina, vitreous and eye poles and distribute them to eye research centers nationwide. Prior to NDRI, no organization retrieved eye tissues for research. Scientists are utilizing diseased and normal eyes from NDRI to study glaucoma, retinitis pigmentosa, diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration and other eye diseases.
NDRI Builds Donor Registries
None of these research endeavors could continue without the donation of human tissue. NDRI reaches out to those undergoing surgery or giving birth, helping them understand that we each have the power to impact science during our lifetime. Contact NDRI for human tissue donation from births, surgical procedures or “after death” donations. NDRI coordinates the entire process of tissue donation including consent, retrieval of the tissue, and shipping the precious tissues to scientists throughout the nation. For more information as to how to become a “Tissue for Research Donor”, please call 877-221-NDRI (6914) or visit www.ndriresource.org.
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