Right: current diabetes blood sensor
Links between Kuwait and Tayside’s renowned network of diabetes research and care strengthen with an agreement to develop new collaborations.

The University of Dundee, NHS Tayside and Aridhia Informatics have
signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Dasman Diabetes Institute and the Ministry of Health in Kuwait. This will allow partners to explore opportunities to jointly develop education, clinical networks and informatics proposals linked to improving health care in Kuwait, with an initial focus on diabetes.

The signing  was attended by H.E. Dr Hilal Al Sayer, Minister
of Health in Kuwait, as well as Mr Paul Gaskell, Deputy Head of Mission,and Mr Duncan Hoyland, Head of Trade & Investment, from the British Embassy in Kuwait.

Diabetes is a significant problem in Kuwait, where it has been
estimated that up to 1 in 4 of the adult population suffers from the disease. This equates to almost 700,000 Kuwaitis.

Dr Kazem Behbehani (left) former assistant Director General of the World Health Organisation, and now Director of the Dasman Diabetes Institute in Kuwait,  said, “The Dasman Diabetes Institute and the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health have led productive discussions with our Scottish partners hroughout this year which has led us to signing this agreement. We are
excited about the development of this partnership, and are convinced it will deliver real benefits to Kuwait and Scotland.”

“We are delighted to sign this Memorandum with our Kuwaiti partners,” said (right) Professor John Connell, Dean of the School of Medicine at the University of  Dundee. “We have substantial experience and expertise across Tayside in diabetes research, care and management and we think we have a lot to offer the people of Kuwait in terms of
developing this innovative partnership to tackle the disease."

Work has begun on a foundation phase for the partnership with a number of clinical workshops involving representatives of the Amiri Hospital and four Primary Healthcare Centres in Kuwait, involved in a pilot project to build an informatics base using existing data.

This will be used as  first step, to establish a comprehensive
register of diabetic patients. Led by Aridhia Informatics, work
has implemented a newgen of informatics capability to create a world class platform to support quality improvement of health care, health services re-configuration and optimal care of patients with chronic diseases.

Such a system of electronic record linkage makes it possible to identify patients already diagnosed as diabetic and also, by using data from laboratory and prescribing systems, identify people who may have undiagnosed diabetes.

“This is the sort of system that has been developed to very good effect in Tayside, where we have pioneered a lot of the activity in this area,” said (left)  Professor Andrew Morris. “Now we can deliver the same kind of effective system in Kuwait by building this relationship with the Dasman Diabetes  Institute and the Ministry of Health.

A clinical steering group has also already been established in Kuwait by the partners with the intent of developing plans to implement a range of educational, clinical network and informatics proposals.

These include: ● An international programme on education (led by the University of Dundee) ● A Kuwaiti implementation of clinical network built on quality improvement methodology (led by NHS Tayside) ● A chronic disease clinical information system for the whole of Kuwait (led by Aridhia Informatics)
● A research programme looking at population genetics and
epidemiology (led by the University of Dundee) and ● Quality Improvement collaboration (led by NHS Tayside).

Germany works on type II drugs

Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and GlaxoSmithKline collaboration agreement on new drugs for type II diabetes negotiated with the help of technology transfer organisation Max Planck Innovation, is worth several million euros and covers a three-year period.

The joint R&D work is based on the research findings of Axel Ullrich, (right) director at the MPI of Biochemistry. He and fellow scientist Mathias Bäcker successfully found the role of protein molecules -  kinases - in connection with the development of type II diabetes, which insulin resistance gives rise to a raised blood sugar level.

Kinases make up a group of important body signal molecules  which in certain circumstances can be involved in the development or manifestation of the disease. In this collaborative project with GSK, scientists are looking for new substances that can inhibit this kinase activity and control it in a targeted manner.

Ullrich already achieved a milestone in the treatment of diabetes back in 1977, together with fellow scientists at the University of California when he developed a method of transferring a copy of the human insulin gene into bacteria. This facilitated the industrial manufacture of human insulin for the very first time and has since made it easier for millions of diabetics to live with the disease, as they no longer have to depend on animal insulin, poorly tolerated by the human body. 



Ullrich’s current research is set to contribute to the successful treatment of diabetes a second time. "Developing innovative drugs to treat diabetes gives us the opportunity to directly influence defects in the molecular signal paths, which lie at the root of diabetes. That enables us to fight the actual causes of diabetes," he says.

Peter Gruss, (left) President of the Max Planck Society expressed delight with the collaboration. "GlaxoSmithKline is one of the world's five major pharmaceutical companies. The collaboration agreement with GSK testifies to the fact that Max Planck Institutes, due to their leading edge in basic research, are also sought-after partners in industry. Max Planck researchers generate ideas for new approaches in application-oriented industrial research.

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Prof Ullrich’s longstanding expertise in molecular biology research is again being put to good use, having already resulted in some very successful therapeutic agents as Herceptin, a drug he developed, successfully used to treat metastasised breast cancer and Sutent, which treats malignant tumours in the gastrointestinal tract (GIST) and renal cancer (MRCC) is also based on Ullrich’s research work. In both cases, suppression of certain kinase activity with suitable inhibitors is central to the treatment."