To tackle the human health challenges that face the world today, the FNIH develops collaborations with top experts from government, industry, academia and the not-for-profit sector and provides a neutral environment where we can work productively toward a common goal.
The Jayne Koskinas Ted Giovanis (JKTG) Foundation for Health and Policy established two NIH Intramural Research Training Awards (IRTAs) for deserving young scholars in the NIH Intramural Training program. Through this IRTA, the JKTG Foundation aims to fund fellows whose basic research could help to expand the understanding of disease and could ultimately result in clinical applications.
The Biomarkers Consortium’s Targeted Plasma-Based Biomarkers in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), completed in July 2012, was the first part of a multi-phased effort utilizing samples from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) to validate multiplex panels in both plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), to diagnose patients with AD and to monitor disease progression.
Sarcopenia 2 seeks to establish evidence-based cut-points for muscle mass and strength and determine their predictive validity for clinically meaningful outcomes (such as mobility, fractures, hospitalization and death); evaluate relative strength as a discriminator for mobility limitation and incident disability; and explore the potential usefulness of sarcopenia as a clinical endpoint in randomized clinical trials.
This is the first project in a two-stage strategy that seeks to characterize beta cell function for predicting long-term beta cell response to an intervention based on short-term measures. The first stage’s goal is to characterize key methodological issues in the assessment of beta cell function by evaluating Mixed Meal Tolerance (MTT) and Arginine Stimulation Tests against the standard Frequently Sampled Intravenous Glucose Tolerance (FSIGT) Test in a series of clinical studies.
The primary objective of this project was to determine whether a 30kDa adipocyte-secreted protein, adiponectin, has utility as predictive serum biomarker of glycemic control in normal non-diabetic subjects and patients with type 2 diabetes, following treatment with a novel and promising new class of compounds, PPARγ agonists. Results confirmed previous relationships between adiponectin levels and metabolic parameters, and support the robust and predictive utility of adiponectin across the spectrum of glucose tolerance.