March 1, 2005
BIRMINGHAM, AL — UAB has received a gift of more than $1.5 million to help establish a Comprehensive Diabetes Center with the goal of finding new treatments and a cure for the disease, it was announced today (March 1). The donation will be used to fund an endowed chair to recruit and retain a premier researcher to serve as director of the center.
The gift — from Nancy Gwaltney of Alexander City, Alabama — represents the initiative’s single largest contribution to date, pushing the campaign over the one-third mark toward its overall goal of $6.5 million. It will be used to establish the Nancy R. and Eugene C. Gwaltney Family Endowed Chair in Juvenile Diabetes Research. UAB has committed to match private funds raised with an additional $6.5 million in space in the Shelby Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Building, now under construction.
“This wonderful gift, along with others received thus far, reflects the community’s deep recognition that UAB is a world frontrunner in the race to find a cure for this disease,” said UAB President Carol Z. Garrison.
“The director of the UAB Comprehensive Diabetes Center will take the lead in developing the center into a world-class facility for the research and treatment of diabetes, taking advantage of the excellent research and clinical programs already in place at UAB,” she said.
Among the other lead gifts are $100,000 from the Junior League of Greater Birmingham, and $50,000 from the Crippled Children’s Foundation, Garrison said.
UAB’s diabetes initiative was announced almost a year ago. At the same time, the university announced its intent to start a program to transplant insulin-producing cells into diabetics. Three patients have been transplanted successfully since then. The first completed her series of infusions and is insulin-free. The other two have not completed the program but already have a greatly reduced requirement for insulin.
“Our clinical goal is to continue with these transplants, and eventually to institute changes that will allow them to be performed with ‘transplant tolerance‘ — that is, without the requirement of medications that suppress the immune system,” said Dr. William J. Koopman, chair of the Department of Medicine. He added that UAB has one of the top transplant-tolerance research programs in the world.
“We are extremely grateful to all the donors thus far, and especially to Mrs. Gwaltney, a good long-time friend of UAB,” Koopman said.
The fund-raising campaign is a partnership between UAB and community leaders interested in finding a cure for diabetes. David Silverstein and Benny LaRussa are chairing the community effort. Both are parents of children who have type 1 diabetes, a condition that leaves patients without insulin-producing cells in their pancreas. This makes them dependent on outside insulin in order to regulate blood sugar levels.