Launched in December, 2000, and funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International, the Gene Therapy Center at the University of Florida, is devoted to the study of gene therapy to fight diabetes and its complications.

University of Florida scientists are endeavoring to capitalize on gene therapy's potential to deliver medicine in novel ways, to engineer rejection-proof tissues for islet and kidney transplant and to tackle diabetes-associated complications like vision loss.

In particular, UF researchers are working on using the adeno-associate virus, or AAV, as a means of delivering corrective genes to cells. AAV is promising because it appears to infect cells without producing side effects and the body's immune system does not attack it as powerfully as it does other gene therapy delivery systems.

Along with colleagues from the University of Miami, researchers plan several key initiatives:

• Endeavoring to genetically modify islet cells in the laboratory to prevent the immune system from attacking transplanted cells or to improve cells' defense mechanisms
  
  
• Using AAV to insert a gene which may prevent transplanted kidneys from an overgrowth of certain cells which eventually shut it down, thus prolonging the life of the transplant
  
  
• Endeavoring to alter AAV's molecular coating to improve its ability to transmit genes into islet cells. And to use gene therapy to block excess blood vessel formation in the retina

For more information on the JDRF Gene Therapy Center at University of Florida, go to http://www.gtc.ufl.edu