FUNDING

To date we have raised over $310,000 for the JDRF and have over 70 riders on the team!

Our many other successes include:

• Getting in great shape together
• Managing diabetes through exercise
• Channeling our energy towards finding a cure
• Quality time together on the road

JOIN US!

Tournament check in time is 3:00 p.m. at the clubhouse. On sale will be raffle tickets & mulligans before the event (remember every dollar counts for charity). Skill challenges for prizes for longest drive, chipping and putting before tee time. A social hour with light appetizers and a no-host bar will follow the tournament. Hole sponsorships are available. Tournament cost per golfer is $45.00, (cash or checks only, made out to JK Sheldon. 66% of the registration fee goes to JDRF). Your check provided before the event, is your reservation confirmation. E-mail, JK at jks526@aol.com or mail your check to:

Working together we can make a difference. Please reflect on these facts.

- As many as 3 million Americans have type I diabetes.

- Each year more then 15,000 children are diagnosed with diabetes in the U.S., which reflects 41 children each and every day.

- JDRF has provided more then $1 billion in direct funding to diabetes research.

$9.4M goes to Benaroya for autoimmune work

Grant awarded to further diabetes research

Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle) - by Peter Neurath Contributing writer

The Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason Medical Center has landed another multimillion-dollar grant, this one for $9.4 million, as it continues to focus research and clinical trials on solving the riddle of autoimmune diseases. These diseases annually cost the country billions of dollars in medical care. A cure would produce enormous savings, which would help moderate health-insurance premium increases belaboring employers.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation recently awarded Benaroya Research Institute (BRI) the grant to study the causes, and discover remedies, for autoimmune diabetes. The grant follows others this year awarded to BRI, including $2.7 million from the Defense Department, $3.5 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and $2.5 million from the Benaroya family. Last year, BRI drew $10.2 million from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Gerald Nepom, BRI's director, said the Benaroya Research Institute, founded in 1956, was the first research group to adopt as its main mission the study and prevention of autoimmune diseases.

Today, BRI is one of seven research centers internationally that the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation has designated to investigate autoimmune diabetes. It employs 200 people, including about 35 with medical or doctorate degrees as well as 50 scientists in training. Some 80 autoimmune diseases -- such as Type-1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis -- afflict 50 million Americans, Nepom said. These diseases, he said, have one thing in common: The body's immune system makes a mistake and attacks its own healthy tissue. When the immune system attacks insulin cells, Type-1 diabetes results. When it attacks the insulating layers around nerves in the brain, multiple sclerosis occurs. BRI's basic objective, Nepom said, is to develop therapies to retrain faulty immune systems so they won't attack healthy tissues.

The $9.4 million grant BRI has just received will fund further study of Type-1 diabetes, which Nepom said affects four of every 1,000 Americans and is estimated by the National Institutes of Health to cost about $12 billion a year for medical care. Insulin is a hormone, produced by the pancreas, that is necessary for the conversion of food into energy for the body's tissues, Nepom said. When the immune system attacks insulin cells, producing diabetes, patients may suffer kidney disease, heart disease and blindness, resulting in "extremely expensive health-care costs." Nepom said BRI is making good progress. It has made the transition from devoting about 95 percent of its resources to discovering possible cures for autoimmune disease to spending about 70 percent on clinical trials. BRI, he said, now is recruiting patients for five different Type-1 diabetes trials and four multiple sclerosis trials. "Basically," Nepom said, "we're trying to fool the immune system so that instead of attacking tissue, it will leave it alone."

Nepom said he hopes to increase awareness in the business community "about the major impact on health, health care and the economics of health from this kind of research." BRI's success in translating basic science into medicine for patients with autoimmunity is three-pronged, he said:

• The scientific discovery that multiple autoimmune diseases share common fundamental mechanisms,
• The major unmet need in treating these diseases,
• And the institutional focus on rapidly bridging the gap between laboratory science and clinical trials.

"The recent $9.4 million award from JDRF is a reflection of confidence that the funding agencies have in BRI to continue to lead the research initiatives in this area," Nepom said. "Competition is keen for funding-agency awards,we continue to grow and to do very well." This year, grants won by BRI increased 9 percent, to $23 million, Nepom said. "We expect $24 million for 2008."