Best Buy founder Richard M. Schulze talks about his family's gift at a December 11 press conference, while University diabetes researchers Bernhard Hering, M.D., and Meri Firpo, Ph.D., look on.
Discoveries in Diabetes
‘In our own backyard’
University receives $40 million to help accelerate a cure for type 1 diabetes
The Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation in December pledged $40 million for diabetes research at the University of Minnesota. The gift will capitalize on the University’s strength in this area and aims to shorten the timeline for creating a viable cure for people with type 1 diabetes.
At the time it was made, this gift was the second largest in the University’s history and the second largest by an individual or family foundation to diabetes research in the United States. In recognition of the gift, the University has renamed its Diabetes Institute for Immunology and Transplantation (DIIT) the Schulze Diabetes Institute.
“Curing type 1 diabetes is possible,” says Bernhard Hering, M.D., an internationally recognized diabetes researcher and scientific director of the Schulze Diabetes Institute. “We only need to declare it possible, engage the brightest minds, be contagiously committed, and break all barriers.”
Reversing diabetes has been possible using human islet cell transplants, through which insulinproducing islet cells from a donor’s pancreas are injected into the recipient’s liver. But because of the severe shortage of donor organs and the challenges of immunosuppression, few have benefited from this experimental treatment.
Today University researchers are seeking ways to develop both an abundant supply of islet cells and better, safer immunosuppressive techniques.
Pursuing a cure
Best Buy founder and chairman Richard Schulze’s daughter Debra Schulze has managed her type 1 diabetes with “Herculean” strength for the last 28 years, her father says. But the family envisions a day when the disease can be cured, not just managed.
The Schulzes searched nationally and internationally for people who are as passionate as they are about curing diabetes. They wanted to invest their money in the people who could do the most good with it—those who could deliver a cure in the foreseeable future. They found those people at the University.
“It was gratifying to know that, at the end of the day, in our own backyard, we had this group of people who were so poised, so passionate about finding a cure,” Richard Schulze says.
Nancy JS Tellor, Maureen Schulze, Richard Schulze, and Debra Schulze represented the family's foundation at the press event.
Building on strengths
Through pioneering work in the Schulze Diabetes Institute, the Stem Cell Institute, the Center for Translational Medicine, and other critical resources, three promising conceptual cures have been identified: human islet transplantation, stem cell–derived islet cells, and pig islet transplantation in partnership with Spring Point Project, a nonprofit organization that raises medical-grade pigs to supply islets for human transplantation. The Schulze family’s gift will support research focused on efforts to implement these cures.
The collaborative effort to advance research in these areas will be led by Hering and the Stem Cell Institute’s Meri Firpo, Ph.D., with support from the Center for Translational Medicine, directed by Bruce Blazar, M.D.
“This transformative gift enables some of the world’s best minds to aggressively pursue a cure for a disease that has an impact on millions of people worldwide,” says University President Robert H. Bruininks, Ph.D. “I want to personally thank the Schulze family for their leadership, passion, and generosity.”
