Worcester Business Journal

14 Worcester Business Journal | April 15, 2024 | wbjournal.com BY MICA KANNER-MASCOLO WBJ Staff Writer D r. John Harris hadn't originally realized his two professional desires – to work with autoimmunity and to work with people – would be at odds when he first delved into type 1 diabetes research. When developing his PhD thesis, Harris had selected a lab focusing its studies on type 1 diabetes, but he quickly became frustrated with the fact he was working with mice and cells in dishes in- stead of being face to face with patients. To rectify this issue, Harris, switched to the field of dermatology to research and treat the autoimmune disease vitiligo. is transition didn't mean he had abandoned hope for treating type 1 diabetes. In fact, the reality was quite the opposite. Now professor and chair of the Department of Dermatology at UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester and founding director of the school's Vitiligo Clinic and Research Center, Harris has founded a vitiligo pharmaceutical com- pany and is about to launch a 1,000-per- son vitiligo study, both of which have strong ties and promising potential for type 1 diabetes prevention. Studying one disease to treat another Back in medical school aer de- fending his thesis, Harris was asked to perform a physical exam on a patient with new-onset type 1 diabetes who was recovering from ketoacidosis, a complication of diabetes. In doing so, he noticed the patient had a large white spot on her back and immediately rec- ognized it as vitiligo. e white spot had formed at the same time as the onset of the patient's diabetes, and Harris would go on to discover this patient had four autoimmune disorders which came on at once: type 1 diabetes, vitiligo, Hashimo- to's thyroiditis, and pernicious anemia. "I recognized that one of [the disor- ders] was in the skin, and I had access to that. I said 'If I study vitiligo I can understand what causes autoimmunity without having to get to the pancreas,'" Harris said. With type 1 dia- betes, the immune system attacks the body's insu- lin-making cells. Type 1 diabetics account for about 5% to 10% of all diabetes cases, to- talling in about 2 million Americans in 2021, accord- ing to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On the other hand, the more prevalent type 2 diabetes is not an autoimmune condition, and instead, is an issue with how the body regulates insulin. Between 2002 and 2015, new inci- dence of type 1 diabetes increased 1.9% per year, according to the CDC. Rates appear to be increasing as more recently. e total number of Americans with type 1 diabetes rose nearly 30% from 1.25 million in 2017 to nearly 1.6 million in 2020, according to an analysis by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) Center of Excellence in New England of the CDC'S 2020 National Diabetes Statistics Report. Within that same 2002 to 2015 time- frame, rates of type 1 diabetes increased most evidently in Black and Hispanic youth with cases rising nearly 20% as opposed to white youth whose cases increased 14%, according to the CDC. e reasons for the overall rise in type 1 diabetes cases and the racial disparities within those numbers are unknown. ough rates of type 1 diabetes are on the rise throughout the country and world, Massachusetts Environmental Public Health Tracking records show no statistically significant difference exists in the numbers of students with type 1 diabetes in Worcester County from the 2009-2010 school year through the 2022-2023 school year. Rates have toggled between 2.5 and 2.6 cases per 1,000 students amongst those years with the 2022-2023 school year including 201 students with type 1 diabetes out of the total 82,751 students. "When you look at the genes in- volved in all these different autoimmune diseases, there's a lot of overlap where Preventing type 1 diabetes UMass Chan researcher is developing a skin treatment, with potential applications to prevent diabetes H E A L T H C A R E & L I F E S C I E N C E S PHOTOS | COURTESY OF UMASS CHAN MEDICAL SCHOOL Dr. John Harris, founding director of the Vitiligo Clinic and Research Center Dr. John Harris presents his research at UMass Chan Medical School's 2024 media fellowship. Harris developed a mouse model of vitiligo, allowing researchers to give mice the disease and investigate further the processes behind it.

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