PILOT AND FEASIBILITY STUDY

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This Einstein-Mount Sinai Diabetes Research Center (ES-DRC) supports the discovery, application and translation of scientific knowledge for the treatment and cure of diabetes. Building upon the established successes of Einstein's Diabetes Research and Training Center (DRTC) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai's Diabetes and Obesity Metabolism Institute (DOMI), the ES-DRC serves as a nexus to i) enhance diabetes research, education and training; ii) attract, mentor and retain research investigators; iii) provide state- of-the-art Core services to maximize research productivity; iv) foster interdisciplinary collaborations locally and regionally, and v) promote the translation of scientific findings from the bench to the bedside and ultimately the community, especially in underserved and minority populations. To accomplish these goals, we reorganized the ES-DRC into five cutting-edge biomedical cores spanning the basic, pre-clinical, and clinical research `translational' divide: 1) Animal Physiology; 2) Stable Isotope & Metabolomics; 3) Human Islet & Adenovirus; 4) Biomarker & Analytical Research; and 5) Translational Research Cores. At the molecular, cellular, tissue, animal based integrated physiology levels, we provide the infrastructure to investigate the basic mechanisms of type 1 and type 2 diabetes. These investigations are translated into human based clinical investigation, population based studies that include large cohort studies of under-represented minorities, women and HIV infected individuals. To attain these goals, we use the support of an Administrative Core for which its personnel have overall responsibility for management, integration and promotion of research and training among Einstein, Mount Sinai and our affiliated institutional Center members. This Core also provides support for our highly successful Pilot & Feasibility Study Program, Enrichment activities and coordination between the Einstein and Mount Sinai Clinical Translational Science Awards (CTSA). This infrastructure already allowed us to establish several new innovative programs including a new microgrant initiative, and establishment of a laboratory information management system (LMIS) for ordering, billing, monitoring experimental progress, data acquisition, data analyses and data distribution to investigators. In parallel, the ES-DRC research cores provide robust cutting-edge methodologies and equipment necessary to identify the molecular mechanisms responsible for the development of diabetes in model organisms and in human-based studies that can be translated to clinical care.