Diabetic Animal Core

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PROJECT SUMMARY Diabetes represents a major threat to the health of the working population, and constitutes an immense social and economic burden. Rodent models of streptozotocin (STZ)-induced or genetic diabetes are commonly used in diabetes research. Diabetic animals have a high mortality rate and require intensive care and characterization. Diabetic complications tend to occur only long after the onset of diabetes, and long-term maintenance and monitoring of diabetic animals are labor-intensive and associated with high costs. The objective of this Core is to centralize the induction, breeding, monitoring, maintenance, and use of diabetic animal models, and to coordinate the sharing of diabetic animal tissues among the investigators. In the past nine years of this COBRE, the Diabetic Animal Core has provided service, diabetic animals, and animal tissues to 35 investigators, including the COBRE Promising Junior Investigators (PJIs), members of the Harold Hamm Diabetes Center (HHDC), and other diabetes researchers. This Core has provided support to 208 publications and 29 funded NIH grants on campus. The Core has greatly increased the efficiency of diabetes research using diabetic animal models and has reduced costs for PJIs and other diabetes researchers at the HHDC. The Core has become an essential and unique facility for diabetes research in Oklahoma. Considering the excellent service of this Core and rapid growth in diabetes research on our campus, the HHDC started to provide funds to subsidize this Core in Phase II of our COBRE. The HHDC is also committed to supporting the transition of this Core to an independent research core facility supported by the HHDC after the completion of the COBRE Phase III. In Phase III, we will further improve the Core services and start the transition of this Core to a HHDC-supported facility. In Phase III, we will induce diabetes by STZ injection in rats and mice, and breed genetic diabetic animals as requested by investigators. We will also monitor diabetes and collect “clinical data” on diabetic animals. We will coordinate sharing diabetic animal tissues by different users and expand the diabetic animal tissue bank. Further, this Core will provide training or technical assistance for specialized assays of diabetic complications. Through these efforts, this Core will provide support for the Pilot Projects funded by the COBRE, greatly enhance diabetes research in Oklahoma and contribute to further growth of the HHDC. It will also attract more local basic scientists into diabetes research and facilitate recruitment of new diabetes researchers into Oklahoma. This Core will contribute to the development of new treatments for diabetes and its complications.