DIPP Study: Systems Biology Approach to Biomarker Discovery in Type I Diabetes (SYSDIPP)

The overall objective of this study is to identify novel molecular markers that characterize development of diabetes-associated autoimmunity and progression towards overt clinical type I diabetes (T1D). Discovering genetic susceptibility markers and markers reflecting the disease activity is a specific aim of the project. This will be achieved by exploiting and integrating DNA microarray, proteomics, and metabolomics technologies in the analysis of samples obtained from a carefully selected patient population at defined stages of disease development. The data on gene expression, protein and metabolite profiles will be correlated with the Type 1 Diabetes Prediction and Prevention Project in Finland (DIPP) data on HLA gene alleles, autoantibodies, markers of enterovirus infections (antibodies, enterovirus RNA) and demographic and metabolic features of the study children to identify putative associations between a particular biomolecular profile and these key parameters.

The project will be carried out by close collaboration of three groups: Prof. Olli Simell (University of Turku and Turku University hospital, the  coordinator of DIPP study), Prof. Riitta Lahesmaa (Turku Centre for Biotechnology) and Dr. Matej Oresic (VTT). This unique consortium brings together complementary and interdisciplinary expertise in clinical T1D research (Simell), immunology, genomics and proteomics (Lahesmaa), biomarker discovery using systems biology platform, proteomics, metabolomics, and bioinformatics (Oresic).

Contact: matej.oresic@vtt.fi

Related projects: TRANSCENDO, VISUBIOMED