Projects with health care
SRP Diabetes believes that the strong translational focus of this program is key to ensuring the research questions address the needs of the patients. By constantly receiving input from clinically active researchers from hospital clinics and primary care units specializing in the treatment of diabetic patients, this program ensures that the research questions addressed will be of direct relevance for the end users, the patients.
Theme Center in Diabetes
Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm County Council co-funded in 2010 a program called “Theme Centre in Diabetes” which was merged with the governmental initiative "SFO" (strategic reserach areas) in diabetes at KI into one structure baptized SRP Diabetes. The theme center expanded the clinical research of the program by bringing in four additional research groups as well as fortifying the support for clinical research. The midterm evaluation of the theme centre in diabetes in 2012 was very positive and the center got prolonged funding to 2015.
"The vision of the Translational Center in Diabetes Research is to promote clinical and basic research, as well as education, within the field of diabetes. To reach this goal the center follows three well defined strategies. More than 20 collaborative projects are presently launched, and most of these are clinically relevant and based on material from patients. Many of the projects show promising results, and even though most are still some distance from implementation in the clinic, the center is well set to go in that direction."
The center has a strong and supportive leadership. Funds invested in this center are definitively well spent.
Nordic Network for Islet Transplantation
The Nordic Network For Clinical Islet Transplantation is a collaboration between the Nordic transplantation units performing studies on islet transplantation as a way to treat type 1 diabetes. The SRP Diabetes PI Torbjörn Lundgren is the coordinator of the network. This is a NIH-funded initiative which aims both at supplying transplantable islets for patients with type 1 diabetes and to supply humans islets for research aiming for improved transplantation as well as to better understand the physiology of human islets. See their website for more information.
4D Type 2 Diabetes Project
SRP Diabetes helped develop this collaborative project between Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm County Council with the aim of improving treatments of type 2 diabetes patients by strengthening the interaction between research and health care. The 4D (4 diagnoses including Type 2 diabetes) project was active between 2013-2017 and resulted in several generalizable solutions. The solutions consist of new services, working methods or processes that all contribute in some way to better collaboration between patients, care and research. See separate page in Swedish for more information.