Poll Scholar to present public lecture on new approaches to a cure for diabetes

Although insulin has been used, in increasingly sophisticated ways, since the 1920s to maintain people with diabetes, it is not a cure and scientists around the world have continued their efforts to find a way to cure or even prevent the disease.

Dr. Anne Cooke, a world leader in using animal models to find ways to prevent or cure diabetes and other autoimmune diseases, will speak on “Therapeutic Approaches to Curing Diabetes” at the UW this month.

She will give the Harvey and Judy Poll Visiting Scholar Lecture, sponsored by the School of Medicine’s Diabetes Endocrinology Research Center and the Robert H. Williams Laboratory, at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 24, in room K-069 of the Health Sciences Center. The lecture is free, intended for a public audience and open to everyone.

She will also present a lecture geared to a scientific audience at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 23, in room D-209 of the Health Sciences Center, when she will focus on immune tolerance induction.

Cooke is a reader in the Division of Immunology at the University of Cambridge, England. After undergraduate work in biochemistry at the University of Glasgow, she earned a Ph.D. in immunology from the University of Sussex in 1970.

As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago, she continued research on antibody-producing lymphocytes. When she returned to England, she began work at Middlesex Hospital Medical School, broadening her interests to include autoimmune diseases such as diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.

For several years, she has been working with various rat and mouse models on approaches to preventing or curing autoimmune diseases. At the same time, she continues basic research to understand the sequence of events that takes place when chronic autoimmune disease develops.

Cooke is a respected teacher and external examiner at the University of London, the Royal Postgradiate Medical School, St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School, Glasgow University, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and King’s College. She serves on many research grant and fellowship committees, including the Medical Research Council’s Molecular and Cellular Medicine Board Grant Committee. She has been invited to speak at international meetings in more than 20 countries.

The Harvey and Judy Poll Visiting Scholar Endowment was established in 1990 by the Polls, who have a long-standing interest in diabetes research and its advancement at the UW and affiliate institutions. The Poll Endowment makes it possible to invite distinguished scholars in the field of diabetes research to the UW each year, fostering new research collaborations. ¶

Claire Dietz