Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | April 15, 2024 | Worcester Business Journal 15 the genes that cause type 1 diabetes are the same genes that cause vitiligo and a number of other autoimmune diseases," said Harris. $4M to find biomarkers In the case of vitiligo, the immune system uses what are called T cells to attack melanocytes, the cells responsible for creating melanin that give the skin color, creating white spots where there was once pigmented skin. According to the Vitiligo Clinic and Research Center, vitiligo affects 0.5-2% of the population. In 2019, Harris founded Villaris erapeutics (one of five pharmaceutical companies he's launched to treat auto- immune and inflammatory diseases) to make a drug blocking a protein called IL-15, a protein he and his team found was vital to vitiligo. e company, based in North Carolina, was acquired a little over a year ago by Delaware biophar- maceutical company Incyte, the same company that owns the only vitiligo treatment approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. Unlike that treat- ment, Harris believes once patients stop taking the Villaris drug, patients' vitiligo won't come back ough the drug was created for vitiligo treatment, Harris said a study performed on mice showed if a drug blocks IL-15, it could prevent type 1 diabetes. Harris is now working toward discovering a prevention for vitili- go. Eight months ago, his team at UMass Chan responded to a call from the National Institutes of Health looking for researchers who thought they could discover markers of those patients who don't currently have, but will develop, autoimmunity. ey received a $4-million grant. e team is now in the process of recruiting 200 individuals with vitiligo and 800 of their family members for the study. Har- ris and his team will follow participants over several years, examining samples of their skin and blood, looking for signals indicating who is going to get vitiligo before they do, so they can ultimately work to block those signals. "If we see a biomarker that predicts somebody getting vitiligo, we think that could be a shared biomarker to someone who is going to get diabetes … e rea- son we're doing it in vitiligo is vitiligo is much more common than diabetes, and there's a high risk to relatives of people with vitiligo, and we have access to the skin," said Harris. is exact issue of access, which originally prompted Harris' transition to dermatology, is one of the most challenging hurdles in diabetes research, said Dr. David Harlan, co-director of the UMass Diabetes Center of Excel- lence and director of Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) Center of Excellence in New England. Harlan's research centers beta cell biology and the anti-beta cell immune response indicative of type 1 diabetes. Both Harlan and Harris work to find the cause of their respective autoimmune diseases of choice in order to then be able to develop effective treat- ments, if not preventions. In that search for a cause, researchers have found the finger might be pointing in the wrong direction in the search for the source of the problem, Harlan said. "What we don't know is what triggers that immune process to begin with … ere is data to suggest that something's wrong with the beta cells, then that im- mune response gets out of hand and doesn't shut off. So there is an immune component, but the beta cell may not be a passive victim, it may have instigated its own killing," Harlan said. What this means, said Harlan, is a possibility something abnormal about the beta cells themselves are causing the immune system to attack them. Harlan's team at JDRF New England Center is working to identify a drug to ultimately prevent those beta cells from being destroyed, which could prevent the disease altogether. "I always tell people, 'I hope I live long enough to say I remember when there used to be a disease called type 1 diabetes, but we can prevent it now with a pill.'" Harlan said. H E A L T H C A R E & L I F E S C I E N C E S F O C U S Diabetes in Worcester County Total percentage of adults 18+ in Worcester County diagnosed with either type 1 or type 2 diabetes Year Percentage 2000 6% 2001 6.4% 2002 6.5% 2003 6.6% 2004 7% 2005 7.3% 2006 7.6% 2007 7.5% 2008 7.9% 2009 8.6% 2010 8.7% 2011 8.4% 2012 8.4% 2013 8.7% 2014 8.4% 2015 8.7% 2016 8.5% 2017 8.5% 2018 9.1% 2019 8.3% 2020 8.2% 2021 8.5% 2022 8.4% Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Pre- vention Dr. David Harlan, whose son has type 1 diabetes, speaks with former Worcester City Manager Edward Augustus during a 2020 lab tour. W

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