Director’s Notes

Extramural funding at the Institute has grown from $16M in FY2024 to $27M in FY2026. Federal support, counting direct federal awards and federal pass-through subawards together, went from $14M to $22M. That is a 57% increase through what has been the hardest NIH climate in decades, at a time when most institutes are reporting the opposite.

These figures cover UW awards only. Grants secured by UWMDI investigators that flow through Seattle Children’s Research Institute are not captured here, so the totals understate the Institute’s actual research volume.

Non-federal funding tripled over the same period, from $2M to $6M, after peaking at $9M in FY2025. Against the FY2024 baseline that is $8M more federal support and $4M more non-federal support, an additional $11M a year in total. That diversification was deliberate. A portfolio drawing on NIH, foundation, and industry support at the same time is what allows the Institute to keep hiring, keep the CRU running, and keep studies open when any one stream contracts.

There are far more new awards than a newsletter can carry. The selection below is meant to show the range of sponsors now supporting work at the Institute, not to rank anything.

NIH and CDC highlights

Foundation awards

Petter Bjornstad, Kalie Tommerdahl and Laura Pyle received funding from Breakthrough T1D for MetMod-T1D, a new trial evaluating whether AMX0035 improves glucometabolic health in adults with type 1 diabetes. Breakthrough T1D is separately supporting a second effort, co-led by Petter Bjornstad and Megan Capozzi with the University of Sherbrooke, to define how the absence of portal insulin delivery shapes hepatic metabolism in type 1 diabetes and whether hepatopreferential insulin can correct it. Gregory Morton received a Seattle Foundation equipment grant that funds state-of-the-art equipment for continuous measurement of heart rate and blood pressure in rodents, which will be offered as a core service within the UW NORC Energy Balance Core.

Partnership with Novo Nordisk

DECODE Kidney is a multi-year cooperative agreement between the Institute and Novo Nordisk, led by Petter Bjornstad. Partnerships of this size and duration are uncommon between an academic institute and industry, and we expect this one to seed further work.

Industry-led multicenter trials

The Institute is also drawing first-in-class trial opportunities to Seattle as a participating site in industry-led multicenter studies. Irl Hirsch leads our site for CNP-103, a Cour Pharmaceuticals Development Co. trial of an antigen-specific immune-tolerance therapy in type 1 diabetes, and Subbulaxmi Trikudanathan leads our site for ZT01, a Zucara Therapeutics trial of an agent intended to restore the glucagon response to hypoglycemia. In both we are one of a limited number of sites nationally, which gives patients in this region access to agents that are not otherwise available here.

Fellowships and career development

Two early-career investigators won nationally competitive awards this year. Anna Bowen received a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellowship Award, and Leticia Sewaybricker received a career development award from the American Heart Association.

There are far more papers this academic year than we can list. The selection below is meant to show the range of the work and the range of journals it appears in, from basic neuroscience and lipid biology through mechanistic human physiology and clinical trials.

All authors listed are members of the Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology and Nutrition unless noted otherwise. A full publication list is maintained on uwmdi.org.

The Institute has seated its first Scientific Advisory Board, and the group convenes for the inaugural meeting in November. The six members were chosen for expertise that is broad and complementary but distinct: clinical trials and diabetic kidney disease, beta cell biology and immunology, cardiovascular RNA biology, neuroscience and research administration, central regulation of metabolism, and type 1 diabetes cure-directed research.

We look forward to their input on scientific direction, recruitment, and the priorities the Institute sets over the next several years.

Daniël van Raalte, MD, PhD

Chair of Diabetology, VU University Amsterdam

Board Chair

Carmella Evans-Molina, MD, PhD

Director, Indiana University Center for Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases

Mark W. Feinberg, MD

Director, Program in Cardiovascular RNA Biology Research, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School

Vittorio Gallo, PhD

Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer, Seattle Children’s Research Institute

Martin Myers, MD, PhD

Director, Michigan Diabetes Initiative, University of Michigan

Alberto Pugliese, MD

Director, The Wanek Family Project for Type 1 Diabetes, Arthur Riggs Diabetes & Metabolism Research Institute, City of Hope

The UWMDI website has been completely rebuilt at uwmdi.org. This was overdue, and it took contributions from across the Institute to get right. Thank you to everyone who supplied copy, photos, study descriptions, and corrections. I am proud of the result.

The site will keep being updated, alongside our LinkedIn page. Please use both. Point collaborators, candidates, referring physicians, and prospective participants to them, and send corrections or new content to Sarah Ryskalczyk (srysk@uw.edu).

The Clinical Research Unit has grown substantially. It now supports more than 30 active studies for investigators across multiple divisions and departments in the School of Medicine, and the range of procedures offered has expanded well beyond standard clinical research support.

Procedures now performed routinely in the CRU include hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic and hyperglycemic clamps, iohexol and para-aminohippuric acid clearance for measured GFR and renal plasma flow, J-wire endovascular biopsies, and pulse wave velocity analysis. These generate human biospecimens and physiological data that no animal model or algorithm reproduces, which is a large part of why NIH consortia and industry sponsors bring studies here.

Credit for this goes to Stephanie Kim, MD, MPH, who has done an excellent job as the new Director of the Clinical Research Unit, and to Kalie Tommerdahl, MD, MS, as Director of Clinical Trial Safety.

Farshad Palad, MPH, has joined as Research Coordinator Supervisor for the CRU, after many years at UCSF, and we are glad to have him. Farshad supports and coordinates studies conducted at UWMDI and is a resource for ongoing and upcoming research.

The Institute’s data science program, led by Laura Pyle, PhD, has grown to ten members, all fully externally funded. The program provides biostatistics, statistical genetics, trial design and analysis, bioinformatics, multi-omics integration, and single-cell and spatial analysis.

The reason to build this in-house rather than outsource it is straightforward. A center that generates irreplaceable human data but sends the analysis elsewhere will always be a spoke. The program has already broadened collaboration well beyond the Institute, with CDC-funded work at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, NIH-funded projects within UWMDI, and joint work with the Kidney Research Institute as well as other centers across UW.

Catalyst Fund: clinical trial start-up

The Catalyst Fund provides bridge funding to expedite the start-up of clinical trials, covering the pre-award and regulatory work that normally delays a study between contract and first participant. The point is competitiveness. Sponsors choose sites on the ability to enroll and the speed to start, and this fund lets us start faster.

Some of you have already heard about this. The request for applications is coming soon and will set out eligibility and the application process.

Accelerator Award: pilot and feasibility

The Accelerator Award is the Institute’s new pilot and feasibility mechanism, offering one-year awards of $30,000 to $50,000 to generate preliminary data, bridge research personnel, or acquire shared equipment. It is open to UWMDI-affiliated investigators and to UW faculty from Instructor through Associate Professor. Laura den Hartigh, PhD, directs the program.

This year’s awardees

Method development for low-input proteomics of vascular endothelial cells

Kalie L. Tommerdahl, MD, MS

Dr. Tommerdahl will establish and validate a low-input mass spectrometry proteomics pipeline for vascular endothelial cells collected by minimally invasive J-wire biopsy. The project will optimize sample processing for the limited cell yield of J-wire sampling, then apply the method to endothelial cells from 40 participants (20 with type 1 diabetes and 20 controls) to identify candidate signatures of endothelial dysfunction. The resulting pipeline and sample bank will generate preliminary data for an R01 application and will be shared as reusable infrastructure for other UWMDI investigators studying vascular and cardiometabolic complications of diabetes.

Role of gut-brain signaling in cystic fibrosis-related diabetes

Jarrad Scarlett, MD, PhD

Dr. Scarlett will investigate whether disrupted communication between the gut and brain contributes to cystic fibrosis-related diabetes, a common and serious complication of cystic fibrosis. Using a CFTR knockout mouse model, the project will perform frequently sampled intravenous glucose tolerance testing to measure how intestinal nutrient infusion affects glucose regulation, building on preliminary data pointing to impaired gut-brain glucose lowering in this model. The findings will strengthen a planned 2027 resubmission to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and will make new surgical and infusion infrastructure available to other UWMDI investigators.

Role of hepatic mitochondrial beta oxidation in the weight loss plateau

Ana Valencia, PhD, and Megan Capozzi, PhD (co-investigator)

Drs. Valencia and Capozzi will test whether changes in hepatic mitochondrial fat oxidation help explain why weight loss plateaus despite continued treatment. The project combines a mouse model, in which hepatic fat-oxidation enzymes are selectively suppressed, with analysis of banked human samples from participants at different phases of a weight-loss intervention. Together these studies will provide preliminary causal and translational evidence for how glucagon-related signaling in the liver shapes the transition from active weight loss to a plateau, informing next-generation GLP-1 and glucagon receptor co-agonist therapies and supporting both investigators toward independent R01 funding.

The Institute has established research exchange partnerships with three leading centers. Each opens strategic opportunities for joint grants, industry collaborations, and shared trainees.

The Institute is running an internal audit of its space so that we use what we have as well as we can. Space is the binding constraint on much of what we want to do next, and getting the allocation right matters more than square footage we do not have.

The committee is Petter Bjornstad, Karin Bornfeldt, Greg Morton, and Rachael Korpi, and the work is proceeding building by building. Building F, floors 3, 6 and 7, has completed its self-assessment and feedback session. Buildings N and S are being engaged now in Phase 2. Investigators in each building will be asked to complete a space self-assessment and to attend a feedback session with the committee to discuss current use and needs going forward.

Several of you have already been asked to be flexible, and you have been. Thank you for the goodwill, team spirit, and generosity that have made these conversations straightforward. It is not a small thing to be asked to give up a bench or a desk, and the response across the Institute has been better than we had any right to expect.

The Institute is recruiting a clinician scholar focused on clinical trials, with an emphasis on type 1 diabetes. The position sits at the intersection of the CRU’s mechanistic trial infrastructure and the Institute’s growing T1D portfolio.

The appointment is at Assistant or Associate Professor without tenure, on the clinician-scholar track. It combines outpatient and inpatient care, with a focus on outpatient diabetes management, alongside teaching and scholarship in diabetes and endocrinology. The person recruited will conduct translational and clinical research in diabetes, metabolism, and lipid disorders. The target start is January 1, 2027 or after.

If you know someone who would be a good fit, please send their name to the search committee. Referrals from within the Institute have been the single most useful source of candidates in every search we have run.