Our Current Initiatives

COVID-19

  • Opening a multidisciplinary diabetes clinic to care for COVID-19 patients and monitor their long-term recovery
  • Understanding why diabetes patients are at a greater risk of COVID-19 complications
  • Creating a protocol to identify which diabetes patients are at highest risk
  • Developing new treatments for diabetic patients suffering from high blood sugar surges caused by COVID-19
  • Identifying long-term and permanent damage to brain, heart, and kidney in COVID-19 survivors
More COVID-19 Research

Diabetes

  • Conducting a clinical study to determine if surgical weight loss and/or exercise can prevent nerve damage and improve thinking
  • Studying why children and teenagers with obesity, prediabetes, and diabetes develop nerve damage
  • Identifying risk factors for brain and nerve damage in patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes
  • NETWORK AFFILIATES: Dr. Troels Jensen (Aarhus University, Denmark), Dr. Robert Nelson (National Institutes of Health), Dr. Amanda Peltier (Vanderbilt University)
More Diabetes Research

Alzheimer's Disease

  • Designing and launching the “first in human” clinical trial using stem cells to treat Alzheimer’s disease
  • Determining how diabetes and obesity can lead to Alzheimer’s disease
  • Exploring what diets promote a healthy brain
  • Investigating how a healthy immune system contributes to a healthy brain
  • Identifying environmental pollution exposures that may contribute to Alzheimer’s disease
  • NETWORK AFFILIATES: Dr. David Bennett (Oxford Unversity, England), Dr. Catrina Robinson (Medical University of South Carolina), Dr. Velandai Srikanth (Monash University, Australia), Dr. Vijay Viswanathan (Chennai, India)
More Alzheimer's Disease Research

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)

  • Facilitating patient participation in three national drug trials at the Pranger ALS Clinic
  • Designing a clinical trial to test if immunosuppressant drugs can slow
  • ALS progression
  • Understanding why Michigan has the highest ALS prevalence in the U.S.A. by examining the interaction of genetics and chemical exposures in ALS patients
  • Advocating for a cleaner environment by raising awareness of how pollution (e.g., legacy pesticides, fIame retardants, air pollution) contributes to ALS
  • NETWORK AFFILIATES: Dr. Tamir Ben-Hur and Dr. Benjamin Reubinoff (Hadassah-Hebrew University, Israel), Dr. Junguk Hur (University of North Dakota), Dr. Daniel Newman (Henry Ford Hospital)
More ALS Research