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USF Reveals Plan To Expand On Diabetes Research

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By ADAM EMERSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 13, 2008

TAMPA - University of South Florida leaders today unveiled an ambitious plan to capitalize on their success in their work with diabetes.

In the coming months and years, the university wants to open a diabetes clinical center, outpatient clinic and -- if the money's there -- a research hospital.

The plan centers on the work of USF pediatrics professor Jeffrey Krischer, who has brought the university nearly $400 million to study the cause and find the cure of Type 1 diabetes.

Krischer, who works with his team out of a nondescript office at USF, has been orchestrating nearly every major worldwide effort to fight a disease that afflicts 3 million people in the United States. He has, however, bemoaned the fact that USF and Tampa lack the comprehensive clinical and research center to aid diabetes victims locally.

"We are all here standing on the world stage in diabetes prevention and cure," Krischer told university trustees.

In July, Krischer won a $128 million National Institutes of Health grant to investigate new therapies that may arrest the progression of Type 1 diabetes, once known as juvenile diabetes. That came about a year after he received a $169 million federal grant to study what triggers the disease.

But federal grants alone can't sustain USF's ambitions, university Provost Ralph Wilcox said.

The university has begun work on launching a clinical research center in its health complex on the north end of campus in which scientists not only will study what happens to diabetes sufferers, but also will provide clinical care. Krischer will hold the $1.4 million endowed chair for that center, and the university will begin recruiting other scientists.

USF health sciences Vice President Stephen Klasko also says he's talking to donors to help back a potential outpatient clinic and a research hospital that can accommodate up to 200 beds. Klasko may bring a proposal to a state agency that determines the need for a new hospital as early as January.

Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at (813) 259-8285.

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