Dr. Philip Trackman Awarded R01 Competitive Grant Renewal

Professor Dr. Philip Trackman was awarded a five year competitive renewal of his R01 grant titled, “Inhibited Intramembranous Bone Healing in Diabetes," by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), on March 1. Funding will extend through February of 2014 and the award totals $1,760,470.

Dr. Trackman and his team are focusing on the mechanisms that contribute to diabetic bone disease. Their working model is an extension of previous findings published by Dr. Trackman’s and Dr. Graves’ laboratories and assumes that glycation products and TNF-alpha, both elevated in diabetes, inhibit lysyl oxidase production by osteoblasts by specific pathways.

"This inhibition leads to poor biosynthetic collagen cross-linking and osteopenia seen in diabetes, particularly in type I diabetes," said Dr. Trackman. "Understanding these pathways could enable development of therapeutic approaches to alleviate diabetic bone disease that have not been previously considered."