Biorepository and Coordinating Center for Studies on Cardiovascular Complications of Human Type 1 Diabetes

The pathogenesis and natural history of type 1 diabetes (T1D) and type 2 diabetes (T2D) are fundamentally different, but the two diseases result in many common long-term complications. Most notably, cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death for individuals with diabetes, resulting in a shortened life expectancy.

While rigorous blood glucose management reduces the risk for CVD development, the vast majority of diabetes patients are unable to meet recommended HbA1c targets. Given the high prevalence of diabetes (10.5%) and pre-diabetes (33%) in the United States (U.S.), it is imperative to understand diabetes-related CVD pathogenesis

to support the development of optimal intervention and treatment strategies. However, studies comparing CVD mechanisms in T1D versus T2D are critically lacking. To address this, we propose to establish a Cardiovascular Repository-Type 1 Diabetes (CARE-T1D) program to facilitate collaboration and multi-modal data acquisition

across a large network of investigators. Through our leadership of 6 organ procurement and biospecimen sharing research programs, we have 15 consecutive years of operational experience and well-established programmatic infrastructure for collecting and distributing 16 different types of transplant-quality tissue from human organ

donors, including a recently concluded kidney project and current heart pilot program. We will leverage our productive relationships with all 57 U.S. Organ Procurement Organizations, centralized 24/7/365 Call Center and Organ Processing and Pathology Core to procure, to swiftly process and bank a complete CVD-related tissue

panel (heart, kidney, vasculature, blood) from 60 donors with CVD, evenly distributed across three groups (T1D, T2D, age/sex-matched no-diabetes controls). Following whole organ radiology and calcium scoring, anatomical dissection will be systematically performed by our highly experienced staff to prepare biospecimens in a variety

of formats (e.g., FFPE blocks, OCT blocks, flash-frozen), with protocols evolving to support emerging needs for research applications. Each case will be subjected to tissue-specific stains with histopathologic examination by board certified pathologists and QA/QC analysis. Resulting data will be made available alongside de-identified

donor information and medical records in a secure searchable Data Portal to aid investigators in selecting sample sets for their research. We propose to establish a Scientific Advisory Board to evaluate research proposals and sample requests, modeled after our existing Tissue Prioritization Committee. We will distribute biosamples to

approved researchers seeking to apply multimodal approaches for deep phenotyping of specimens to study CVD progression in T1D vs T2D. The Data Portal will also support visualization and sharing of all externally generated data types. Finally, we will organize annual meetings to promote collaboration across the Cardiovascular

Biorepository Consortium. In sum, we expect the proposed CARE-T1D program will support discovery and mechanistic research, conducted by a collaborative network of investigators, that will increase our understanding of CVD in diabetes, leading to early detection as well as novel treatments specific for both T1D and T2D.