Accelerating the global effort to cure diabetes, the Diabetes Research Institute (DRI), a center of excellence at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, established a “virtual laboratory” that links scientists at multiple centers around the world.
The Brehm Virtual Diabetes Research Network, made possible through a generous gift from Dee and Bill Brehm of McLean, Virginia, is a state-of-the-art, multi-channel audio and video system that allows investigators from multiple continents to collaborate and share information in real time as if they were working side by side in the same laboratory. Using the new system, investigators can perform joint translational and bench-top research, as well as facilitate the training of young scientists in the most cutting-edge techniques currently available. Critical newly developed procedures in islet technology conducted in the DRIs cGMP/cGTP laboratory, such as human cell processing, can be observed simultaneously by colleagues at distant research centers. “Today you can connect laboratory, microscopes, equipment and areas so that project teams from different countries can work together on the same project. It is amazing to see how these teams can work together like theyre physically in the same location,” said Camillo Ricordi, M.D., scientific director of the Diabetes Research Institute. The use of the latest satellite imaging and communication technology is a key tool for the Diabetes Research Institute Federation, a unique global collaboration that unites research centers to concentrate solely on curing diabetes. The DRI Federation synergizes scientific planning and research design to maximize efficiencies of cost, time and information transfer. Through these advances in telescience, researchers at the partnering centers can work together on specific projects in real time, as if they were in the same lab. “We must transfer any new pertinent finding toward new treatments for patients in the fastest, most efficient and safest way possible,” said Dr. Ricordi.
