GRA and GDEcD Honor Saxby Chambliss with Legacy Award at Impact of Discovery event

On July 10 in Washington D.C.,  the Georgia Research Alliance and the Georgia Department of Economic Development honored U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss at the “Impact of Discovery” event highlighting breakthroughs and start-ups emerging from Georgia’s research universities.  Chambliss was given the first “Legacy Award” for his continued support of the state’s research universities. Members of Georgia’s congressional delegation, leaders and board members of GRA, the Department of Economic Development and the presidents of Georgia’s major research universities were also in attendance.

Upon receiving the award, Chambliss remarked:

“I am honored to receive this award, but we should also be honoring all the men and women in the room here tonight. It doesn’t matter if it is medical, defense, or agriculture: Research is the heart and soul of our economy. The research we are doing today may not pay off in a year or two years, but ensures that 20 years from now the United States of America remains the greatest nation in the world. 

“GRA and the Department of Economic Development have fostered relationships between our top-rated research universities, governments, and private organizations, which allow us not to just coexist, but to be the envy of the world when it comes to research.

“You look around the room tonight and it is full of Democrats and Republicans, because this is a bipartisan issue everyone can truly rally around. It’s another reason why Georgia is the model for every other state when it comes to public-private research partnerships.

“This makes me very proud not only as a Georgian, but as representative of Georgia to the United States Senate.” 

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TEDDY study providing vast amounts of valuable information

Since 2003, nearly 425,000 newborns have been screened as part of an international initiative to determine how genetics and environment cause type 1 diabetes.  From these, some 9,000 children identified as at-risk for the disease have been followed in a study titled “The Environmental Determinates of Diabetes in the Young” — or TEDDY — to enable scientists to understand which genetic mutations correlate with progression or lack of progression of the disease.

GRA Eminent Scholar Jin-Xiong She at Georgia Regents University leads the TEDDY project in Georgia and Florida and has received a $10 million dollar National Institutes of Health grant to continue the study for another 5 years.  TEDDY has clinical centers in Colorado, Washington, Finland, Sweden and Germany as well.

“We are using the information we collect to correlate the progression or lack of progression of the disease with different molecular markers and environmental triggers to understand all the factors contributing to the development of type 1 diabetes as well as what factors can provide protection from disease progression,” She said.  “We are watching it unfold at all levels.  We are finding the real players.  This is going to allow us to predict better which children will develop type 1 diabetes, and, ultimately, what we can do to prevent or better manage this disease.”

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